Les papillons

Details

Fernand Leger (1881-1955)
Les papillons
signed and dated 'F.LÉGER.37' (lower right)
oil on canvas
51 x 35 in. (129.5 x 89 cm.)
Painted in 1937

Provenance

Galerie Petrides, Paris.
Galerie Linssen, Cologne.
Galerie Louis Carré, Paris.
Edward Totah Gallery, London.
Pat Kery Fine Art, New York.
Anon. sale, Sotheby's, London, 28 June 1988, lot 56.
Private Collection, New York.

Literature

G. Duthuit, "Union et distance", Cahiers d'Art, Paris, 1939, nos. 1-4, p. 63 (illustrated).
R. Delevoy, Léger, étude biographique et critique, Geneva, 1962, p. 104 (illustrated in color).
F. Léger, Fonctions de la peinture, Paris, 1965, p. 96 (illustrated).
E. Petrová, Fernand Léger, Prague, 1966, p. 98 (illustrated).
G. Bauquier, Fernand Léger catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint 1932-1937, Paris, 1996, p. 282, no. 968 (illustrated in color, p. 283).

Exhibited

Bern, Kunsthalle, Calder, Léger, Bodmer, Leuppi, 1947, no. 62.
Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, Alexander Calder--Fernand Léger, 1947, no. 68 (illustrated).
Paris, Galerie Louis Carré, F. Léger, peintures, 1953, no. 15.
Zurich, Kunsthaus, Fernand Léger, 1957, no. 92.
Paris, Galerie Louis Carré, La peinture sous le signe de Blaise Cendrars, Robert Delaunay, Fernand Léger, 1965, no. 13.

Lot Essay

During this perdiod, Léger was intrigued by the juxtaposition of two opposing forms, flat geometric shapes and rounded or organic ones in his compositions. In the present painting these shapes appear to float against the neutral background of open space. Speaking of his work at this time, Léger stated, "I dispersed my objects in space and kept them all together while at the same time making them raidate out from the surface of the picture. A tricky interplay of harmonies and rythms made up of background and surface colors, guidelines, distances and oppositions" (quoted in W. Schmalenbach, Fernand Léger, New York, 1976, p. 132).

As Peter de Francia has commented:

For Léger 1937 was an extraordinary prolific year. He was beginning to paint in a way that was to continue till the mid-1940s: wide, part-landscape paintings in which heavy polychromed elements appear to float free, intertwined with tree roots and wispy tendrils (P. de Francia, Fernand Leger, London, 1983, p. 187).

More from IMPRESSIONIST AND MODERN ART (EVENING SALE)

View All