‘It leads invariably to the clear separation of line from colour patch so that, not only is the entire picture surface animated by the movement of volumes, but every surface contains its own arsenal of contrasts out of which it is built.’Ĭonor Jordan states that the Contraste de formes series show Léger ‘synthesising a lot of influences’, including Analytical Cubism and Italian Futurism, whose artists had exhibited just a year earlier in Paris. ‘His technique is simple, without room for vacillation, and much of the force of these paintings is the result of its simplicity,’ writes Christopher Green, an authority on the artist. It is the logical spirit that will achieve the greatest result.’ In his second Académie Wassilieff lecture - prepared as he was bringing this series of paintings to a close - Léger declared, ‘Composition takes precedence over all else to obtain their maximum expressiveness lines, forms, and colours must be employed with the utmost logic. ![]() ‘To obtain their maximum expressiveness lines, forms, and colours must be employed with the utmost logic’ - Fernand Léger All the component lines, forms and colours are actively engaged as they play off each other to create a jolting, rhythmic composition. Léger fabricated a tumbling surface in which shapes simultaneously appear to project out of the picture plane or recede into it, thereby suggesting volume. He was by now on the verge of pure painting - only vestiges of the subject remained - and in early 1913 he took the plunge with his Contrastes de formes, the series that occupied him for the remainder of the year and into 1914. Léger took a stable subject - as in a Cézanne portrait - and invested it with extreme formal contrasts: flatly coloured planes opposing modelled tubular, conical and cylindrical forms. La femme en bleu, painted in mid-1912 and shown at the Salon d’Automne that year, was his answer to these issues. Léger felt that the accelerating pulse of modern living required a more radical approach in order to reflect its new sensations. He also sought to move beyond the influence of Cézanne, whose work had made an overwhelming impression on him when he saw the master’s memorial retrospective at the 1907 Salon d’Automne. Léger wished to replace the illusory dynamism of Italian Futurism, with its use of modern, cosmopolitan subjects treated in motion, with a true pictorial dynamism. This exquisite picture, offered in New York on 13 November, comes from the property of the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation, and proceeds from its sale will go towards the foundation’s philanthropic mission. ![]() The Contrastes de formes have long been considered cornerstones of important collections of modern art, and thus nearly all examples from the series are today housed in major institutions. To stand just inches away is a great thrill - it gives you a sense of the beautiful rawness of the surface.’ ![]() ‘The rhythm that bursts out of it is palpable and exciting to be in the presence of. ‘It's like a punch to the solar plexus,’ says Conor Jordan, Deputy Chairman, Impressionist and Modern Art at Christie’s in New York. Instead, his only subject was pure, abstract shapes and colours, hinged on a network of forceful lines. Across the course of just a few months, in a sequence of some 14 canvases, Léger advanced beyond Cubism into a visual language that abandoned the representational concerns of his contemporaries, Picasso and Braque. Painted by Fernand Léger in 1913, Contraste de formes belongs to a series of paintings that changed for ever the way we look at art.
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