Fernand Léger

Estate of the artist
Georges Bauquier, Biot
Private Collection, New York
Private Collection, London
Private Collection, Connecticut
Sale: Sotheby’s, New York, May 5, 2010, lot 55
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

Tokyo, Mitsukoshi Museum of Art; Nara, Prefectural Museum of Art; Takamatsu, City Museum of Art & Biot, Musée National Fernand Leger, Fernand Léger, 1993-94, no. 29 illustrated in color in the catalogue
Basel, Galerie Beyeler, Fernand Léger; Werke 1925-55, 1994-95, no. 14

Georges Bauquier, Fernand Léger, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, 1932-1937, Paris, 1996, no. 851, illustrated in color, p. 109

Original canvas. Under ultra violet light, there is some retouching visible throughout the composition, the largest being in the white line of the promenent element at the left and a 4-inch line in the red pigment extending into the black, under the two white elements at the top-right.
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During the mid-to-late 1930s, Léger's work focused largely on international interior design projects, and his paintings from this period often incorporated the crisp imagery that he devised for these purposes. In 1937, he designed stage sets for the Paris Opéra, as well as decorations for the Trade Union Congress at the Vélodrome d'Hiver and the Transport des Forces for the Palais de Découverte in Paris. Léger continued to work in this capacity in 1938, when he was commissioned to decorate the apartment of Nelson Rockefeller in New York. These various design projects brought forth a particular decorative flair in many of the artist's formal compositions on canvas of the period, including the present work.

Léger's compositions executed around this time were populated with images of the natural world, such as butterflies, flowers and underwater plants. In Composition sur fond rouge et jaune, the dominating forms are all painted in strong, unmodulated colors, delineated in black and silhouetted against the flat red and yellow background. According to Léger, these are the colors that express the reality of the medium of painting. Rather than imitating nature, the artist was interested in exploring the language of painting in its fullest and purest form, thus reducing his vocabulary to the elements of color and form. As a result, Léger's composition defies a sense of gravity and transcends the earth-bound nature of a traditional landscape or still life.

In 1950 Léger wrote, "The plastic life, the picture, is made up of harmonious relationships among volumes, lines and colors. These are the three forces that must govern works of art. If, in organizing these three elements harmoniously, one finds that objects, elements of reality, can enter into the composition, it may be better and may give the work more richness" (quoted in Carolyn Lanchner, Fernand Léger, New York, 1998, p. 247).