Fernand Léger

Estate of the artist
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1969

Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Fondation Maeght, Fernand Léger, Rétrospective, 1988, no. 119, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Jerusalem, The Israel Museum, Fernand Léger, Oeuvres sur papier, 1989, no. 52, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Milan, Palazze Reale, Fernand Léger, 1989-90, no. 92
Villeneuve d'Ascq, Musée d'Art Modern, Léger, 1990, no. 143, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Biot, Musée National Fernand Léger, Léger et le spectacle, 1995, illustrated in colour the catalogue
Paris, Galerie Berggruen & Cie, Fernand Léger, gouaches, aquarelles et dessins, 1996, no. 19, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Gilles Néret, Fernand Léger, Paris, 1990, no. 143
Miriam Cendars, Blaise Cendrars, l'or d'un poète, Paris, 1996, illustrated pp. 60-61

Executed on a thick cream wove paper, not laid down and hinged to the mount at two places on the upper edge. There are some scattered paint losses, minor creases, surface scratches and medium rubbing. Otherwise this work is on overall good condition. Colours: The yellows are more muted and the blues more vibrant in the original when compared to the printed catalogue illustration.
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The present work is testament to Léger’s remarkable artistic collaboration with Rolf de Maréfor the tribal ballet La Création du monde, which finally premiered by the Ballets suédois in October 1923. The dancers and their costume design were deliberately camouflaged into the set design elements. Birds, monkeys, human figures and deities were in perpetual motion and created the vision of an ever changing image for the audience. On the theatre curtain created by Léger, under the white moon, three sculpted slabs arise from the chaos of an undetermined world. Those three deities, both hieratic and monumental (there were eight metre high cardboard figures on the stage) linked the public to the majesty of primitive Africa. Critics were flabbergasted at the apparition of the these three African deities - Nzamé, Medere, and Nkwa - holding a council before the creation of the world, though the public applauded enthusiastically at their visual impact. The Ballets suédois were based inParis but performed throughout Europe and the United States between 1920 and 1925. They were known for their synthetic, inter-disciplinary approach to theatre, combining forms of dance, drama, painting, poetry, and music with acrobatics, circus, film, and pantomime.

Léger relished this opportunity for avant-garde collaboration and this particular ballet nègre provided the perfect context for the artist to experiment with a primitive aesthetic. Léger was not alone in this line of enquiry and Picasso had famously already been heavily influenced by the startling visual impact of African and Oceanic masks, an exploration which culminated in his great masterpiece Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907. Léger’s version of primitivism was much more geometric and mechanic in feel than Picasso’s more openly erotic interpretation. Léger’s deliberately limited palette of ochres, browns, blacks and whites here perfectly evokes the primordial context of the story whilst still retaining its incontestably Modern aesthetic. The work is remarkably flat and the forms are deconstructed nearly to the point of full-abstraction. There is an inescapable rhythm to the work: the repetitive vertical forms reverberate across the sheet, reflecting the taste for Afro-American jazz that was sweeping Europe at the time, as well as invoking the ballet’s African setting. Léger has here masterfully translated the plastic impact of African sculpture into a colourful vision of full forms and dramatic chromatic contrasts, and the resulting expressive impact is incontestable.