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Lot Essay
In the late 1920s Léger began to introduce objects of irregular, organic form into his compositions, as another way of creating contrasting pictorial elements. He was to some extent influenced by the Surrealists, especially Jean Arp and Yves Tanguy, who often looked for inspiration in naturally occurring forms. In discussing this period, Jean Cassou and Jean Leymarie have noted Léger's 'fascination with the object': 'Léger was now breaking away from the world of machines and turning toward natural forms which were essentially vegetable, mineral, animal... From the phase of dispersion in space, he kept the principle of using a neutral background in depth, against which the objects were grouped. But most often he detached a single object and set it down with the precision of a scholar and the fervour of a poet, using a resolutely classical style' (op. cit,, p. 115).
Léger found his subjects in trees, especially their gnarled trunks and roots. He drew the scalloped contours of leaves and the rough surfaces of mere stones - anything that he might observe or pick up on the grounds on his family's farm in Normandy. The present drawing shows a fragment of flint, the hard quartz stone that primitive men had used to make tools and ignite their fires. Léger drew it close up and magnified, conjuring primordial forms out of its fractured shape. This primitive object becomes a visual analogy that suggests other natural landscape forms, both inanimate and living. It possesses a universal, cosmic dimension as well; Silex is related to the comet shapes that Léger also painted around this time. Léger also drew and coloured another version of his subject, cast against a blue background, formerly in the collection of Maurice Jardot, Paris, and donated to the Musée de Belfort, in 1997.
Léger created his natural world from such small components, working from small to large. These germinal elements became the basis for his new interest in the landscape during the early 1930s, in which he combined the figure and natural forms. Léger wrote,'One becomes aware that everything is equally interesting, that the human form, the human body, are not more important, from the plastic point of view, than a tree, a plant, a fragment of rock or a rope' (Ibid., p. 117).
Léger found his subjects in trees, especially their gnarled trunks and roots. He drew the scalloped contours of leaves and the rough surfaces of mere stones - anything that he might observe or pick up on the grounds on his family's farm in Normandy. The present drawing shows a fragment of flint, the hard quartz stone that primitive men had used to make tools and ignite their fires. Léger drew it close up and magnified, conjuring primordial forms out of its fractured shape. This primitive object becomes a visual analogy that suggests other natural landscape forms, both inanimate and living. It possesses a universal, cosmic dimension as well; Silex is related to the comet shapes that Léger also painted around this time. Léger also drew and coloured another version of his subject, cast against a blue background, formerly in the collection of Maurice Jardot, Paris, and donated to the Musée de Belfort, in 1997.
Léger created his natural world from such small components, working from small to large. These germinal elements became the basis for his new interest in the landscape during the early 1930s, in which he combined the figure and natural forms. Léger wrote,'One becomes aware that everything is equally interesting, that the human form, the human body, are not more important, from the plastic point of view, than a tree, a plant, a fragment of rock or a rope' (Ibid., p. 117).