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Lot Essay
A highly finished gouache, Les fleurs is an important preparatory study for Léger's oil of the same title executed in 1926 (B. 447, fig. 1) and sold by the artist to Kahnweiler immediately after. The oil's present location in unknown.
Between 1924 and 1927, Léger executed his most accomplished and pure still-lifes. A new focus on the representation of the object is recorded from 1922, when his monumental Nature morte au chandelier (Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris) anticipated a lucidity of vision and spatial perception that would reach its climax in the compositions of the mid-1920s. The natures mortes of 1925-26, imbued with the classical tension of Léger's Purist approach, are exquisite exercises in chromatic and compositional balance. Composition (1925, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York), Le Haut de Forme (1925, M. Lionel Prejger collection, Paris); L'Accordéon (1926, Private collection); Le Profil (1926, Private collection) and Nature morte au masque de plâtre (1927, Galerie Beyeler, Basel), like Les Fleurs, are the works where the artist 'came closest to making the proportionally harmonious, strictly rational, mass-production ideal of the Purist seem a possible reality, as product itself of an approach to modern life which was at least in part a simplified version of the Purist approach' (C. Green, Léger and the Avant-garde, New Haven and London, 1976, p. 308).
Les Fleurs is sophisticatedly played around the strict juxtaposition of vertical planes of colours: hot hues and cold nuances elegantly contrasting, and, above all, rounder, organic shapes displayed alongside sharp volumes and neat lines. The flowers of the title, with their slim stalks and geometric petals, are modelled on the flowers of the celebrated oil La Lecture (1924, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris), the ultimate expression of Léger's research into Purism.
Between 1924 and 1927, Léger executed his most accomplished and pure still-lifes. A new focus on the representation of the object is recorded from 1922, when his monumental Nature morte au chandelier (Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris) anticipated a lucidity of vision and spatial perception that would reach its climax in the compositions of the mid-1920s. The natures mortes of 1925-26, imbued with the classical tension of Léger's Purist approach, are exquisite exercises in chromatic and compositional balance. Composition (1925, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York), Le Haut de Forme (1925, M. Lionel Prejger collection, Paris); L'Accordéon (1926, Private collection); Le Profil (1926, Private collection) and Nature morte au masque de plâtre (1927, Galerie Beyeler, Basel), like Les Fleurs, are the works where the artist 'came closest to making the proportionally harmonious, strictly rational, mass-production ideal of the Purist seem a possible reality, as product itself of an approach to modern life which was at least in part a simplified version of the Purist approach' (C. Green, Léger and the Avant-garde, New Haven and London, 1976, p. 308).
Les Fleurs is sophisticatedly played around the strict juxtaposition of vertical planes of colours: hot hues and cold nuances elegantly contrasting, and, above all, rounder, organic shapes displayed alongside sharp volumes and neat lines. The flowers of the title, with their slim stalks and geometric petals, are modelled on the flowers of the celebrated oil La Lecture (1924, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris), the ultimate expression of Léger's research into Purism.