FERNAND LÉGER | Composition (La Danseuse au triangle jaune)

Paul Rosenberg, Paris (inv. no. 2862)
Galerie Louis Carré, Paris
David Solinger, New York (and sold: Sotheby's, New York, November 1, 1978, lot 50)
Private Collection, New York (acquired at the above sale)
Private Collection (and sold: Sotheby's, London, December 3, 1980, lot 77)
Private Collection, Switzerland (acquired at the above sale and sold: Sotheby's, London, March 31, 1987, lot 56)
Acquired at the above sale

New York, Gallery Chalette, Fernand Léger, 1965, no. 11, illustrated in the catalogue
Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Fernand Léger—Selected Works from a Private Collection, 1994, n.n.

Werner Schmalenbach, Fernand Léger, New York, 1975, no. 32, illustrated p. 34
Werner Schmalenbach, Fernand Léger, Paris, 1977, no. 32, illustrated p. 34
Georges Bauquier, Fernand Léger, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint 1929-1931, Paris, 1995, no. 689, illustrated in color p. 145

The work is in very good condition. The canvas is unlined. Some minor wear to the extreme edges with associated losses, not visible when framed. There is some pigment shrinkage in the black pigments, most notably along the left edge. Under UV light, there are four pindots of inpainting in the grey and white pigments in the figure's legs of the lower left quadrant.
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The late 1920s and early 1930s marked Léger’s departure from the rigid, mechanical vocabulary that characterized his earlier Purist work and the embrace of an organic aesthetic. This can be seen in the present work from 1930, which features quasi-abstract forms floating through space, unreliant on traditional forms of perspective. Rejecting classical visual representation, Léger freed his objects from the geometric structure of the painting. He aimed to extract the object from its conventional context and relationships, allowing it to exist for its own sake in a new isolated, revitalized state. As the artist once explained, “In painting, the strongest restraint has been that of subject matter upon composition, imposed by the Italian Renaissance. The effort towards freedom began with the Impressionists and has continued to express itself until our day… The feeling for the object is already in primitive pictures—in works of the high periods of Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, Roman and Gothic art. The moderns are going to develop it, isolate it, and extract every possible result of it” (quoted in “The New Realism,” in Edward F. Fry, ed., Fernand Léger, Functions of Painting, New York, 1973, p. 109). 

The present work is also an early testament to the powerful influence of Surrealism on the artist’s aesthetic around this time. Although he never aligned himself formally with the Surrealist group, Léger, ever at the forefront of the avant-garde, was drawn to the biomorphic imagery that pervaded the pictures of Miró and Dalí during these years (see fig. 1). The present composition is a fine example of how Léger incorporated the linear flourishes and amoeboid forms of Surrealist iconography into his work.