Léger's fascination with mechanical forms and movement persisted throughout his life, and, along with Delaunay, he saw wheels and circles as symbols of speed and light. Léger called the circle 'the compulsive element of life' and in works such as Composition Circulaire discs are used as symbols of mechanical power, as well as representing movement, their bold colours reinforcing this sense of dynamism.

"The world of these paintings is at once matter-of-fact and quite fantastic. In them Léger creates an environment that looks quite familiar and at the same time like nothing we have ever seen before. What is familiar, of course, is the mechanical environment as a structural phenomenon, as a world of shapes and as a system of relationships. And at the same time, despite their abstractness, these works are surprisingly unmetaphorical, their poetry is a concrete poetry - rhythmic, musical, but at the same time straightforward ... Although Léger never became involved with collage per se, the imagery of these paintings seems to grow from what might be called a collage mentality, not only because of the flatness of the forms but because of the disjunctive and discontinous quality of the space ... there is a large, almost panoramic sense of scale" (Exh.cat., Fernand Léger, Acquavella Galleries, Inc., New York, 1987, p. 14).