Fernand Léger

Fernand Léger 1881 Argentan/Normandy - 1955 Gif-sur-Yvette The French painter, graphic artist and sculptor Fernand Léger was born on February 4, 1881 in Argentan in Normandy. In 1897-1899 he completed an apprenticeship in an architectural office in Caen before moving to Paris in 1900, where he first worked as an architectural draftsman. In 1903/04 Fernand Léger attended the École des Arts Décoratifs and the Académie Julian. Fernand Léger moved in the circles of Parisian avant-garde artists, was friends with Robert Delaunay, Henri Matisse, Alexander Archipenko, Jacques Lipchitz and others. In 1907, Fernand Léger visited the exhibition at the Grand Palais organized in honor of Paul Cézanne one year after his death, which left a lasting impression on him as well as on numerous other artists. Fernand Léger was equally impressed by the Cubist art of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, which was being created at the time. Fernand Léger also found in his paintings to a geometric formal language in reduced color. In his paintings, he dissects people, objects, and landscapes into cylindrical forms, cubes, and cones. He was also a close friend of Robert Delaunay, whose Orphic Cubism rubbed off on his works. In 1912 Fernand Léger's works were shown for the first time in Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler's gallery in Paris. Geometric formal language and enthusiasm for technology 1914-1917 Fernand Léger was a soldier in the First World War. From 1918 onwards, Fernand Léger arrived at an even more precise, even more geometric depiction of tubes, gears and screws in his works, thus coming to terms with his enthusiasm for modern technology and the big city that surrounded him. In 1920 he published the magazine "L'Esprit Nouveau" with Le Corbusier. Between 1921 and 1925 he created his first stage decorations, and in 1924 Fernand Léger made the groundbreaking experimental film "Le ballet mécanique" together with Man Ray and Dudley Murphy. In 1925 Fernand Léger held his first solo exhibition in the USA, which made him internationally known. He himself traveled to the USA for the first time in 1931, and further stays followed. Alfred Flechtheim, who had already been regularly exhibiting Fernand Léger's works since 1917, showed the largest exhibition of Fernand Léger's work to date in his Berlin gallery in 1928. With one hundred paintings, gouaches, watercolors and drawings, the exhibition became a social event in Berlin. Years of exile 1940-1945 in the USA: The American dimension of Fernand Léger's work From the 1930s, the technoid, cool style of representation calms down and Fernand Léger's painting style becomes softer and more naturalistic. Now Surrealism leaves its mark on his works. During the years of the Second World War, Fernand Léger lives in the USA, travels the country for lectures, teaches at Yale University. He came into contact with the painters of the American avant-garde. When he returns to France after 1945 and opens the Académie Fernand Légers, these contacts continue and some American artists join him in Paris, including Sam Francis, Kenneth Noland, Ellsworth Kelly and others. The mutual inspiration gave rise to cheerful works, perfectly formed still lifes and figure paintings; Fernand Léger's influence on American artists, in turn, appears not least in the works of Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg, for example. Fernand Léger's late work includes colorful paintings and graphic works as well as a number of monumental murals. In 1952, for example, he created a large-scale mural for the Great Hall of the UN building in New York. He designed church windows and mosaics, and was commissioned to paint the dining room of a passenger ship. From 1949 he also works with ceramics. In 1955 the artist received the painting prize at the Biennale in Sao Paulo, and was of course also invited to the first Documenta in Kassel. But Fernand Léger died on August 17, 1955, barely a month after the opening of Documenta. Shortly before, he had set up a new studio in Gif-sur-Yvette near Paris. His works were also shown posthumously at Documenta II in 1959 and at Documenta III in 1964. In 2008, the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen showed the extensive retrospective "Fernand Léger Paris - New York," which, in addition to providing an overview of the creative years from 1912 to 1955, also showed for the first time the enormous influence on American Pop artists.