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Lot Essay
In the late 1940s, Léger returned to one of his favorite subjects, the circus, and explored it relentlessly through many variations. The steady development of this theme led to his masterpiece La Grande Parade, état définitif of 1954, now in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. The monumental canvas sums up his life-long artistic pursuit of depicting men and women and leisure, existing in a joyous state of freedom and play.
Commenting on his working methods, he admitted “I worked on La Grande Parade for two years. I study everything ponderously. I work very slowly indeed. I am unable to improvise. The more I watch myself, the more I see that I am a classic. I do a long preparatory work. First I do a quantity of drawings, then I do gouaches, and lastly I pass on to the canvas; but when I tackle that I have 80 percent assurance. I know where I am going… If I have drawn circus people, acrobats, clowns, jugglers, it is because I have taken an interest in their work for thirty years. Ever since I designed Cubist costumes for the Fratellini, I did a quantity of drawings and studies for La Grande Parade. For I am a classic: if my first drawings are off the cuff, I am aware of the media that I shall employ…The slightest transformation was long pondered and worked up with the help of new drawings. A local alteration often involved changing the entire composition because it affected the balance of the whole” (quoted in W. Schmalenbach, Fernand Léger, New York, 1976, p. 166).
Commenting on his working methods, he admitted “I worked on La Grande Parade for two years. I study everything ponderously. I work very slowly indeed. I am unable to improvise. The more I watch myself, the more I see that I am a classic. I do a long preparatory work. First I do a quantity of drawings, then I do gouaches, and lastly I pass on to the canvas; but when I tackle that I have 80 percent assurance. I know where I am going… If I have drawn circus people, acrobats, clowns, jugglers, it is because I have taken an interest in their work for thirty years. Ever since I designed Cubist costumes for the Fratellini, I did a quantity of drawings and studies for La Grande Parade. For I am a classic: if my first drawings are off the cuff, I am aware of the media that I shall employ…The slightest transformation was long pondered and worked up with the help of new drawings. A local alteration often involved changing the entire composition because it affected the balance of the whole” (quoted in W. Schmalenbach, Fernand Léger, New York, 1976, p. 166).