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Lot Essay
This ink and wash composition is a preliminary study for the two versions of L'aviateur, which Léger painted in the early months of 1920 (Bauquier, nos. 205 and 206). At this time, Léger was then emerging from the first phase of his post-war période mécanique in which he employed imagery derived almost exclusively from industrial objects, the factory assembly line, and urban architecture. In the pictures where he included the human presence, it was usually relegated to a peripheral role, so that it stood dwarfed by its industrial environment. By 1919, however, the artist began to re-introduce the figure, and integrate it as a more central focus in his mechanical compositions. Léger regarded the human form "not as a sentimental element, but solely as a plastic element" (quoted in J. Cassou and J. Leymarie, Fernand Léger, Drawings and Gouaches, London, 1973, p. 46). He continued to deconstruct the figure, using basic planar and spherical forms that were related to the hard and flat mechanical elements surrounding it, following his dictum that "Modern man lives more and more in a predominantly geometrical order." (in "The Machine Aesthetic I," Functions of Painting, New York, 1973, p. 52).
Airplanes and their engines, the most technologically advanced machinery at that time, held a special fascination for Léger. He recalled, "One year [1912], while showing at the Salon d'Automne, I had the advantage of being next to the Aviation Show, which was about to open...Never, in spite of my familiarity with such spectacles, had I been so impressed...[There were] beautiful metallic objects, hard, permanent, and useful, in pure local colors; infinite varieties of steel surfaces at play next to vermilion and blues. The power of geometric forms dominated all" (in ibid., p. 60). The semi-circular forms in L'aviateur derive from the disks in Léger's mechanical paintings of the late 'teens, and here represent the powerful rotary engine in its streamlined cowling, used in many airplanes during and after the First World War, as well as the arc of a spinning propeller.
Airplanes and their engines, the most technologically advanced machinery at that time, held a special fascination for Léger. He recalled, "One year [1912], while showing at the Salon d'Automne, I had the advantage of being next to the Aviation Show, which was about to open...Never, in spite of my familiarity with such spectacles, had I been so impressed...[There were] beautiful metallic objects, hard, permanent, and useful, in pure local colors; infinite varieties of steel surfaces at play next to vermilion and blues. The power of geometric forms dominated all" (in ibid., p. 60). The semi-circular forms in L'aviateur derive from the disks in Léger's mechanical paintings of the late 'teens, and here represent the powerful rotary engine in its streamlined cowling, used in many airplanes during and after the First World War, as well as the arc of a spinning propeller.