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拍品專文
Painted in 1938, Fernand Léger’s L’araignée verte is one of a series of exuberant paintings that takes as its subject the abstract, amorphous form of a spider; its legs like tendrils stretching across the canvas. A chaotic and swirling array of overlapping biomorphic, abstract forms floats in this vibrantly coloured composition. Throughout the 1930s Léger endeavoured to create a new artistic language that aimed not for mimetic reproduction of objects, but instead for an abstraction inspired by nature and the imagination. From the beginning of the decade, Léger had begun to introduce organic forms into his painting, initiating looser compositions that are permeated with visual rhythms and an energetic dynamism; a contrast to his earlier compositions in which forms were tightly ordered and arranged across the canvas.
The mid-1930s was a time of prolific production for Léger. From 1935, the artist was working on two monumental figural canvases – Adam et Eve (1925-39, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf) and Composition aux deux perroquets (1935-39, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris) – while at the same time painting an abundance of still-life paintings that feature a plethora of natural subjects, ranging from insects to fruit and plants. Many of these paintings, such as L’araignée verte, share isolated motifs with these two major works. The vein-like tendrils of the spider can be seen in the bunch of flowers that Eve holds in Adam et Eve, while the organic amoeba forms that float in the background of L’araignée verte can be seen in both of the larger works.
These abstract forms can also be seen in a commission Léger painted in the New York apartment of Nelson Rockefeller in 1938, the same year that he painted L’araignée verte. Léger had first travelled to New York, ‘the most colossal spectacle in the world’ (Léger, ‘New York’, in E. Fry, ed., Functions of Painting by Fernand Léger, London, 1965, p. 84), in 1931, returning twice more before he undertook Rockefeller’s commission in 1938. New York provided enormous inspiration and stimulation for the artist from his first visit. Overwhelmed by the immense verticality of the architecture, the sparkling neon lights and cacophony of colours of the modern metropolis, Léger painted dynamic compositions that pulsate with bold, unmodulated colour.
The radiant shades of unmixed pigment in L’araignée verte demonstrate the increasingly prominent role that colour took within Léger’s painting at this time. Léger wrote of his belief in the power of colour in 1938, the year that L’araignée verte was painted, ‘Colour is a vital necessity. It is raw material indispensable to life, like water and fire. Man’s existence is inconceivable without an ambience of colour’ (quoted in C. Lanchner, Fernand Léger, exh. cat., New York, 1998, p. 227). In the present work, the composition erupts from the pale blue background, the brilliant yellow, red, blue and green elements creating a vibrant explosion of pure colour. Imbued with a lyricism and sense of dynamism, L’araignée verte encapsulates Léger’s explorations into colour and shape in his creation of a new pictorial vocabulary.
The mid-1930s was a time of prolific production for Léger. From 1935, the artist was working on two monumental figural canvases – Adam et Eve (1925-39, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf) and Composition aux deux perroquets (1935-39, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris) – while at the same time painting an abundance of still-life paintings that feature a plethora of natural subjects, ranging from insects to fruit and plants. Many of these paintings, such as L’araignée verte, share isolated motifs with these two major works. The vein-like tendrils of the spider can be seen in the bunch of flowers that Eve holds in Adam et Eve, while the organic amoeba forms that float in the background of L’araignée verte can be seen in both of the larger works.
These abstract forms can also be seen in a commission Léger painted in the New York apartment of Nelson Rockefeller in 1938, the same year that he painted L’araignée verte. Léger had first travelled to New York, ‘the most colossal spectacle in the world’ (Léger, ‘New York’, in E. Fry, ed., Functions of Painting by Fernand Léger, London, 1965, p. 84), in 1931, returning twice more before he undertook Rockefeller’s commission in 1938. New York provided enormous inspiration and stimulation for the artist from his first visit. Overwhelmed by the immense verticality of the architecture, the sparkling neon lights and cacophony of colours of the modern metropolis, Léger painted dynamic compositions that pulsate with bold, unmodulated colour.
The radiant shades of unmixed pigment in L’araignée verte demonstrate the increasingly prominent role that colour took within Léger’s painting at this time. Léger wrote of his belief in the power of colour in 1938, the year that L’araignée verte was painted, ‘Colour is a vital necessity. It is raw material indispensable to life, like water and fire. Man’s existence is inconceivable without an ambience of colour’ (quoted in C. Lanchner, Fernand Léger, exh. cat., New York, 1998, p. 227). In the present work, the composition erupts from the pale blue background, the brilliant yellow, red, blue and green elements creating a vibrant explosion of pure colour. Imbued with a lyricism and sense of dynamism, L’araignée verte encapsulates Léger’s explorations into colour and shape in his creation of a new pictorial vocabulary.