Fernand Léger

Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris
Collection Abreu, Lisbon
Barbara Mathes Gallery, New York (acquired by 1997)
Michelle Rosenfeld Gallery, New York (acquired by 1998)
Private Collection, Switzerland
Annely Juda Fine Art, London
Private Collection (acquired from the above)

Chicago, International Galleries, Fernand Léger 1881-1955 Retrospective Exhibition, 1966, no. 34, illustrated in the catalogue
New York, Barbara Mathes Gallery, Forms and Rhythms. Alexander Calder, Stuart Davis, Fernand Léger, 1997
New York, Michelle Rosenfeld Gallery, Léger- America's Culture, 1998, no. 16

Georges Bauquier, Fernand Léger, Catalogue raisonné 1932-1937,  Paris, 1996, vol. V, no. 918, illustrated in colour p. 211

The canvas is not lined. UV examination reveals a few spots of retouching along the upper and left edges, probably related to previous frame rubbing, and a few thin vertical lines of retouching, the longest of which is approximately 5cm., towards the lower right part of the central white element. Otherwise, this work is in overall very good condition. Colours: overall fairly accurate in the printed catalogue, though the red tones are slightly more vibrant in the original.
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This composite of colourful objects is an excellent example of Léger's still lifes from the 1930s, a critical period of development when his style embodied the influences of numerous aesthetics, including Cubism, Surrealism, Purism and De Stijl. As Carolyn Lanchner explains, ‘Léger aimed for a 'new realism' rather than the kind of exploration of the unconscious pursued by the Surrealists. It was a realism of combining not just the abstract and the representational but several different modes of the representational [...] The combination of these various modes reflects the artist's growing interest in the aesthetic tastes of the working people. As he had said in 1923, 'It is necessary to distract man from his enormous and often disagreeable labors, to surround him with a pervasive new plastic order in which to live’ (quoted in Carolyn Lanchner, Fernand Léger (exhibition catalogue), The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1998, p. 209).

Composition (Nature morte) exemplifies Léger's belief that line, colour and form are the essential elements that govern a work of art. The artist explored the still life genre throughout his career, finding beauty and significance in simple, everyday objects. Speaking at the Museum of Modern Art in 1935, he stated: ‘It is, therefore, possible to assert the following: that colour has a reality in itself, a life of its own; that geometric form has also a reality in itself, independent and plastic [...] There was never any question in plastic art, in poetry, in music, of representing anything. It is a matter of making something beautiful, moving, or dramatic—this is by no means the same thing [...] Commonplace objects, objects turned out in a series, are often more beautiful in proportion than many things called beautiful and given a badge of honor [...] My objective is to try and establish the following: no more cataloguing of beauty into hierarchies—that is the most clumsy mistake possible. Beauty is everywhere, in the arrangement of saucepans on the white wall of your kitchen, perhaps more there than in your eighteenth-century salon or in official museums...' (quoted in Picasso, Braque, Leger: Masterpieces from Swiss Collections (exhibition catalogue), Minneapolis, 1975, pp. 65-69).