.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
"Abstract art is the most important, the most interesting of the different plastic trends that have developed during the last twenty five years....This direction is dominated by the desire for perfection and complete freedom that makes saints, heroes and madmen. It is an extreme state in which only a few creators and admirers can maintain themselves." (F. Lger, 'Abstract Art' 1931, reproduced in Lger, Functions of Painting, New York 1973, p. 83)
Composition au damier (Composition jaune et noir) (Composition with draughts/Yellow and Black Composition) of 1929 is an almost completely abstract work in which Lger has subverted naturalism in favour of compositional harmony. With its forms floating and interacting in an imaginary space, an unreal pictorial balance is achieved along with a softening of the lines and forms of Lger's objects that reflect the influence of surrealism on the artist. "I dispersed my objects in space", Lger commented, "and kept them all together while at the same time making them radiate out from the surface of the picture. A tricky interplay of harmonies and rhythms made up of background and surface colours, guidelines, distances and oppositions......In this new phase, freedom of composition attains infinty. A total liberty that will permit the production of compositions from imagination in which the creative fancy will be able to reveal itself and develop." (Fernand Lger cited in W. Schmalenbach, Lger, New York 1976, p. 132)
The only recogniseable objects left in this remarkable work are the yellow and red squares of the checkerboard for the draughts of the title. Yet even these are distorted in space and seem to be sliding off the surface of the board into the miraculous pictorial space in which fluid lines intersect with and pierce soft objects and curved planes form a magical construction. The use of the draughtsboard in this work may reflect Lger's strong interest in games of chance at this time, but on the other hand, for Lger, beauty was "everywhere, in the object, in the fragment, in purely invented forms". What is needed he asserted, "is to develop one's sensibility so as to be capable of distinguishing what is beautiful from what is not beautiful." (Ibid, p. 132)
Composition au damier (Composition jaune et noir) (Composition with draughts/Yellow and Black Composition) of 1929 is an almost completely abstract work in which Lger has subverted naturalism in favour of compositional harmony. With its forms floating and interacting in an imaginary space, an unreal pictorial balance is achieved along with a softening of the lines and forms of Lger's objects that reflect the influence of surrealism on the artist. "I dispersed my objects in space", Lger commented, "and kept them all together while at the same time making them radiate out from the surface of the picture. A tricky interplay of harmonies and rhythms made up of background and surface colours, guidelines, distances and oppositions......In this new phase, freedom of composition attains infinty. A total liberty that will permit the production of compositions from imagination in which the creative fancy will be able to reveal itself and develop." (Fernand Lger cited in W. Schmalenbach, Lger, New York 1976, p. 132)
The only recogniseable objects left in this remarkable work are the yellow and red squares of the checkerboard for the draughts of the title. Yet even these are distorted in space and seem to be sliding off the surface of the board into the miraculous pictorial space in which fluid lines intersect with and pierce soft objects and curved planes form a magical construction. The use of the draughtsboard in this work may reflect Lger's strong interest in games of chance at this time, but on the other hand, for Lger, beauty was "everywhere, in the object, in the fragment, in purely invented forms". What is needed he asserted, "is to develop one's sensibility so as to be capable of distinguishing what is beautiful from what is not beautiful." (Ibid, p. 132)