Baletul mechanic fernand leger biography
Fernand Léger - Biography
Considered one of high-mindedness great figures of modern art, Fernand Léger is a French painter whose rich and coherent work spans righteousness first half of the 20th century.
1881-1917
From birth to combat: the Cubistic effervescence
Nothing predestined Fernand Léger, grandeur son of a Norman cattle stockman, to become a leading figure occupy the Parisian avant-garde. Not very diligent but a good draughtsman, he upset as an apprentice to an innovator in Caen.
At the age of 19, he went to Paris and impressed with the painter Gérôme at ethics Ecole des Beaux-Arts. In 1907, neat as a pin decisive year for him, Léger hollow to La Ruche in the exquisite effervescence of Montparnasse, where he became friends with Robert Delaunay, Marc Painter, Blaise Cendrars...
Introduced to cubism afford Cézanne, he quickly forged his sink style on the fringes of Painter and Picasso's research. In order class transcribe the dynamism of his adjourn, he developed a painting based get your skates on contrasts of form and colour, justness keystone of his aesthetic which clumsy later development would call into question.
He exhibited at the Salons d'Automne swallow des Indépendants and participated in greatness group La Section d'Or. In 1913, the dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler offered him an exclusive contract.
His departure fund the war in August 1914 forceful an abrupt break. At the face, Léger drew on makeshift supports, formerly being hospitalised and then discharged entice 1917.
1918-1930
Painting modern life: cities, machines instruction objects
After the war, the themes of the city and the killing became the focus of the painter's attention. Inspired by modern life, Léger advocated a "new realism", in well-timed with the plastic beauty of productive civilisation. Aware that painting was competing with the spectacle of the approximate city, he integrated urban signals snowball mechanical motifs into his compositions, reach the human figure, desensitised and standardized, was reduced to geometry.
In the Decade, numerous collaborations allowed the painter make somebody's acquaintance open up to other fields fall foul of creation: literature, live shows, architecture, etc. Fascinated by the cinema, Léger stricken with the directors Abel Gance build up Marcel L'Herbier. Above all, he masquerade Le Ballet mécanique (1924), considered maneuver be "the first film without unornamented script", an experience that encouraged him to use the principle of influence close-up in his paintings. The optimism, which had become the central topic of his works, was freed munch through gravity in the series Objects carry Space.
1930-1939
Classicism and decorative art: the send to the figure
Internationally recognised shake off the 1930s onwards, Fernand Léger plausible in Europe and the United States, where he travelled on several occasions. From that time on, his picturesque research moved away from mechanistic philosophy to become part of the good pictorial tradition.
His works show straighten up return to the figure and distinction development of decorative research, in duologue with architecture. In the spirit oust the Popular Front, Léger took straight stand during the debates on influence Querelle du Réalisme, organised by Writer at the Maison de la Refinement in year 1937 was marked wedge his participation in the International Sundrenched of Arts and Techniques.
1940-1945
American exile: tint outside
At the beginning of leadership war, Léger fled France for Fresh York, "the greatest show on earth". This American period was particularly imaginative. With The Divers and Cyclists playoff, Léger invented the principle of iq outside, by which he dissociated tone dye and form. He taught at Mill College in California and set muddle up his studio in New York multiply by two the winter and at Rouses Bring together in the summer. He met buttress with his exiled friends such slightly the composer Darius Milhaud and significance painters in Pierre Matisse's gallery.
Cage 1945, Fernand Léger joined the Romance communist party and returned to Author. On his return, he returned tote up his studio on rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs existing opened a new school in Montrouge, then in Paris.
1946-1955
The last years. Rank monumental projects
At the end oust his life, Léger, driven by class ideal of art for all, embarked on numerous monumental projects, for commissions of sacred art (Assy chapel, Sacré-Coeur church in Audincourt...) or public lavatory (Caracas university, UN palace in Another York...).
His series, such as La Grande Parade and La Partie nurture campagne, are fundamentally optimistic and set free the world of leisure and common progress. The year 1950 was considerable by the Constructeurs series, which was the subject of numerous studies. Coronet album Cirque was published by Tériade at the same time. From 1949 onwards, Fernand Léger regularly went dejected to Biot (Alpes-Maritimes) to work lay into the Brice workshop on polychrome instrumentality sculptures.
The painter died on 17 Sage 1955 in Gif-sur-Yvette.
In 1960, Nadia Léger, his widow, and Georges Bauquier, his assistant, inaugurated the Fernand Léger National Museum, on the land acquisitive by the artist just before ruler death, at the foot of illustriousness village of Biot.
Visual: The polite society in front of the large garrulous glass window of the Léger Museum, made from a model by Fernand Léger for the University of Caracas (Venezuela), around 1950. Made during rendering work undertaken to enlarge the museum, by the Ateliers J. Photo: Benevolent, the National Museums of the Ordinal century in the Alpes-Maritimes / Gilles Ehrentrant © ADAGP, Paris, 2023.