費爾南·雷捷

Léonce Rosenberg, Paris (sold: Galerie Charpentier, Paris, June 16, 1959, no. 9)

G. David Thompson, Pittsburgh

Galerie Beyeler, Basel

Baron Graindorge, Liège

Galerie Maeght, Paris

Sale: Sotheby's, New York, May 11, 1987, lot 81

Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

Zurich, Kunsthaus, Fernand Léger, 1933

Geneva, Musée de l'Athénée, Exposition ORT, 1960, no. 39

Zurich, Kunsthaus; Düsseldorf, Kunstmuseum; The Hague, Gemeentemuseum & Turin, Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Thompson Pittsburgh: Aus einer Amerikanischen Privatsammlung, 1960-61, no. 111, illustrated in the catalogue

Basel, Galerie Beyeler, Cubisme, 1962, no. 48, illustrated in the catalogue

Basel, Galerie Beyeler, Cubisme, 1962, no. 40, illustrated in the catalogue

Basel, Galerie Beyeler, F. Léger, 1964, no. 21, illustrated in the catalogue

Bremen, Galerie Michael Hertz, Fernand Léger: Werke aus den Jahren 1909 bis 1955, 1966, no. 6, illustrated in the catalogue

Vienna, Musée du XXe Siècle, Fernand Léger, 1968, no. 16, illustrated in the catalogue

Basel, Galerie Beyeler, Fernand Léger, 1969, no. 13, illustrated in the catalogue

Düsseldorf, Städtische Kunsthalle, Fernand Léger, 1969-70, no. 35, illustrated in the catalogue

London, The Tate Gallery, Léger and Purist Paris, 1970, no. 46, illustrated in the catalogue

Paris, Grand Palais, Fernand Léger, 1971-72, no. 79, illustrated in the catalogue

Malines, Cultureel Centrum der Stadt Mechelen Bourgmestre A. Spinoy, Fernand Léger, 1979, no. 26, illustrated in the catlaogue

Caracas, Museo de arte contemporaneo, Fernand Léger, 1982, no. 17, illustrated in the catalogue

Zürich, Museum für Gestaltung; Berlin, Bauhaus-Archiv Museum für Gestaltung; Strasbourg, Ancienne Douane & Paris, Centre culturel Suisse, L'Esprit Nouveau, Le Corbusier et l'industrie 1920-1925, 1987, illustrated in the catalogue

Bulletin de l'Effort moderne, Paris, 1924, no. 4

Christian Zervos, "Fernand Léger Est-il Cubiste?," Cahiers d'Art, Paris, 1933, no. 3-4, illustrated p. 118

Pierre Descargues, Fernand Léger et la règle des contrastes, XXe Siècle, Paris, 1969, no. 33, illustrated p. 38

Georges Bauquier, ed., Fernand Léger, Catalogue raisonné, 1920-1924, Paris, 1992, no. 373, illustrated in color p. 303

The present painting reflects the importance of architecture as an aesthetic influence in Léger's painting in the years after the First World War, and his association with the Purist artists Amédée Ozenfant and Charles-Edouard Jeanneret (Le Corbusier). Le Corbusier, who was better known as an architect than as a painter, was a leading proponent of mathematical precision and the solidity of form in art. Léger was initially drawn to the general principles of Purism and in the present work, however, he focused on the clarity and solid geometry of his objects, adhering to the primary concerns of the Purist objective. 

Writing about Léger's works from 1924-27, Christopher Green commented: 'They are the product of a pictorial idea of the figure or object whose brutal "plastic" simplicity is personal, but which is the product of an approach to the realities of modern life indelibly tinged with the idealism of L'Esprit Nouveau, an approach which remains stubbornly "realist" but whose highly selective vision of the world picks out the most useful, the most geometrically "pure", the most precisely finished of its manufactures, and subjects even the nude or the figurative fragment to the mass-production yet "classical" values thus extracted. And in their grand, harmonious architecture with its clear articulation of spatial incident, these paintings are at the same time the product of an international avant-garde [...] Their assurance and the conviction they carry is founded on more than fifteen years of faith in what was then most modern about the industrial world, of openness to what was most new in the avant-garde and of experiment in book illustration, theatre and film as well as in painting' (C. Green, Léger and the Avant-Garde, New Haven & London, 1976, p. 310).