拍品專文
The present work is a preparatory study for Personnages devant le jardin which Léger executed in oil in 1922 (B.333, see illustration below).
Léger remarked of this period "after the mechanical period came the monumental period, the massive phase, the compositions with large figures, the enlargement of details. I heightened the impression of flatness while arranging my figures and objects in the same formal manner as during the machine period...I had broken down the human body, so I set about putting it together again and rediscovering the human face" (see W. Schmalenbach, Fernand Léger, New York, 1976, p. 110).
The ordered compositional elements in the present work, such as the latticed columns, reflect Léger's interest in the De Stijl style: "For roughly four years, from 1920 to 1924, Léger made use of the formal puritanical order of De Stijl design. It provided him with a setting in which to place the objects in his paintings. He used the elements of contrast thus provided very simply; curvilinear and rounded modelled components were placed in front of sets of stringent right-angled grids" (P. de Francia, Fernand Léger, New Haven, 1983, p. 94).
The present work also relates to a further group of four oil paintings of 1922 including Personnages dans un jardin (B. 332), La Liseuse, mère et enfant (B. 334) and La femme et l'enfant (B. 335) which is housed in the Kunstmuseum, Basle. Christopher Green has commented on the Basle painting: "Léger's Mère et l'enfant, like his Grand Déjeuner (B. 311) of 1921, did not conceal its modernity and did not mute the force of his view of modern life. Working with this new, popular subject, Léger arrived at a new compound of the contradictory elements that had given such power to Le Grand Déjeuner...The setting is once again not only post-Cubist in its pursuit of complex overlappings and modern in the stark clarity of its contrasts, but primitive or 'pre-Renaissance' in the stressed conficts of its perspective and in the naïve presentation of its still-life objects on their table-tops. What is more, the figures themselves generate just that same scene of conflict between the classically traditional and the mechanistically up-to-date as the nudes of the 1921 canvas, their impassive machine perfection robbing them of their individuality" (see C. Green, exh. cat., Fernand Léger, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Berlin, 1980).
In a discussion of the present work and a related drawing also included in the Basle/London exhibition of 1987-8, Dorothy Kosinsky has observed: "typical of Léger's work during the twenties [they] are characterised by a certain classicism and order. These drawings are tight works, with the same degree of finish as Léger's paintings. Massive, sculpturesque, severly stylized figures are assembled in complex spaces composed of overlapping and intersecting patterned planes... The intricate environments in both works, based upon precise pencilled grids, combine post-Cubist spatial ambiguities with conflicts in spatial perspective that seem directly inspired by pre-Renaissance models. Moreover, the figures are, at once, inimitably Léger in their awkward, machine-like, sheet-metal stiffness and yet they draw upon a rich aesthetic tradition of the nude" (op. cit.).
The present work was formerly in the collection of Douglas Cooper (1911-1984), the celebrated art historian and critic, and one of the foremost champions of Cubism. He met Léger, Picasso and Braque in Paris in the 1930s and maintained longstanding friendships with all three artists. As early as 1927 Cooper began to amass what became one of the most important private collections of Cubist works in the world, including paintings by Léger such as Nature Morte (B. 382) of 1924 (to be sold as lot 47, Christie's New York, 14 May 1997) and Juan Gris' Verre et Bouteille (C. 295) of 1919 (see lot 31).
Léger remarked of this period "after the mechanical period came the monumental period, the massive phase, the compositions with large figures, the enlargement of details. I heightened the impression of flatness while arranging my figures and objects in the same formal manner as during the machine period...I had broken down the human body, so I set about putting it together again and rediscovering the human face" (see W. Schmalenbach, Fernand Léger, New York, 1976, p. 110).
The ordered compositional elements in the present work, such as the latticed columns, reflect Léger's interest in the De Stijl style: "For roughly four years, from 1920 to 1924, Léger made use of the formal puritanical order of De Stijl design. It provided him with a setting in which to place the objects in his paintings. He used the elements of contrast thus provided very simply; curvilinear and rounded modelled components were placed in front of sets of stringent right-angled grids" (P. de Francia, Fernand Léger, New Haven, 1983, p. 94).
The present work also relates to a further group of four oil paintings of 1922 including Personnages dans un jardin (B. 332), La Liseuse, mère et enfant (B. 334) and La femme et l'enfant (B. 335) which is housed in the Kunstmuseum, Basle. Christopher Green has commented on the Basle painting: "Léger's Mère et l'enfant, like his Grand Déjeuner (B. 311) of 1921, did not conceal its modernity and did not mute the force of his view of modern life. Working with this new, popular subject, Léger arrived at a new compound of the contradictory elements that had given such power to Le Grand Déjeuner...The setting is once again not only post-Cubist in its pursuit of complex overlappings and modern in the stark clarity of its contrasts, but primitive or 'pre-Renaissance' in the stressed conficts of its perspective and in the naïve presentation of its still-life objects on their table-tops. What is more, the figures themselves generate just that same scene of conflict between the classically traditional and the mechanistically up-to-date as the nudes of the 1921 canvas, their impassive machine perfection robbing them of their individuality" (see C. Green, exh. cat., Fernand Léger, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Berlin, 1980).
In a discussion of the present work and a related drawing also included in the Basle/London exhibition of 1987-8, Dorothy Kosinsky has observed: "typical of Léger's work during the twenties [they] are characterised by a certain classicism and order. These drawings are tight works, with the same degree of finish as Léger's paintings. Massive, sculpturesque, severly stylized figures are assembled in complex spaces composed of overlapping and intersecting patterned planes... The intricate environments in both works, based upon precise pencilled grids, combine post-Cubist spatial ambiguities with conflicts in spatial perspective that seem directly inspired by pre-Renaissance models. Moreover, the figures are, at once, inimitably Léger in their awkward, machine-like, sheet-metal stiffness and yet they draw upon a rich aesthetic tradition of the nude" (op. cit.).
The present work was formerly in the collection of Douglas Cooper (1911-1984), the celebrated art historian and critic, and one of the foremost champions of Cubism. He met Léger, Picasso and Braque in Paris in the 1930s and maintained longstanding friendships with all three artists. As early as 1927 Cooper began to amass what became one of the most important private collections of Cubist works in the world, including paintings by Léger such as Nature Morte (B. 382) of 1924 (to be sold as lot 47, Christie's New York, 14 May 1997) and Juan Gris' Verre et Bouteille (C. 295) of 1919 (see lot 31).