Fernand Lger

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Fernand Lger

Fernand Lger photographed by Carl Van Vechten,

1936
Born

February 4, 1881
Argentan, Orne

Died

August 17, 1955 (aged 74)

Gif-sur-Yvette

Nationality French
Field

painting, printmaking and film maker

Movement

Tubism, Cubism, Modernism

Joseph Fernand Henri Lger (February 4, 1881 August 17, 1955) was a French painter,
sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he
gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style. His boldly simplified treatment of
modern subject matter has caused him to be regarded as a forerunner of Pop Art.

Contents
[hide]

1 Biography
2 Legacy
3 Notes
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Biography

Still Life with a Beer Mug, 1921, oil on canvas, the Tate
Lger was born in the Argentan, Orne, Basse-Normandie, where his father raised cattle. Fernand
Lger initially trained as an architect from 18971899 before moving in 1900 to Paris, where he
supported himself as an architectural draftsman. After military service in Versailles in 1902
1903, he enrolled at the School of Decorative Arts; he also applied to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts
but was rejected. He nevertheless attended the Beaux-Arts as a non-enrolled student, spending
what he described as "three empty and useless years" studying with Grme and others, while
also studying at the Acadmie Julian.[1] He began to work seriously as a painter only at the age of
25. At this point his work showed the influence of Impressionism, as seen in Le Jardin de ma
mre (My Mother's Garden) of 1905, one of the few paintings from this period that he did not
later destroy. A new emphasis on drawing and geometry appeared in Lger's work after he saw
the Czanne retrospective at the Salon d'Automne in 1907.[2]
In 1909 he moved to Montparnasse and met such leaders of the avant-garde as Archipenko,
Lipchitz, Chagall, and Robert Delaunay. His major painting of this period is Nudes in the Forest
(190910), in which Lger displayed a personal form of Cubismhis critics called it "Tubism"
for its emphasis on cylindrical formsthat made no use of the collage technique pioneered by
Braque and Picasso.[3]

The City, 1919, oil on canvas, The Museum of Modern Art, New York
In 1910 he joined with several other artists, including Delaunay, Jacques Villon, Henri Le
Fauconnier, Albert Gleizes, Francis Picabia, and Marie Laurencin to form an offshoot of the
Cubist movement, the Puteaux Groupalso called the Section d'Or (The Golden Section). Lger
was influenced during this time by Italian Futurism, and his paintings, from then until 1914,
became increasingly abstract. Their tubular, conical, and cubed forms are laconically rendered in
rough patches of primary colors plus green, black and white, as seen in the series of paintings
with the title Contrasting Forms.
Lger's experiences in World War I had a significant effect on his work. Mobilized in August
1914 for service in the French Army, he spent two years at the front in Argonne. He produced
many sketches of artillery pieces, airplanes, and fellow soldiers while in the trenches, and
painted Soldier with a Pipe (1916) while on furlough. In September 1916 he almost died after a
mustard gas attack by the German troops at Verdun. During a period of convalescence in
Villepinte he painted The Card Players (1917), a canvas whose robot-like, monstrous figures
reflect the ambivalence of his experience of war. As he explained:
...I was stunned by the sight of the breech of a 75 millimeter in the sunlight. It was the magic of
light on the white metal. That's all it took for me to forget the abstract art of 19121913. The
crudeness, variety, humor, and downright perfection of certain men around me, their precise
sense of utilitarian reality and its application in the midst of the life-and-death drama we were in
... made me want to paint in slang with all its color and mobility.[4]
This painting marked the beginning of his "mechanical period", during which the figures and
objects he created were characterized by sleekly rendered tubular and machine-like forms.
Starting in 1918, he also produced the first paintings in the Disk series, in which disks suggestive
of traffic lights figure prominently.[5] In December 1919 he married Jeanne-Augustine Lohy, and
in 1920 he met Le Corbusier, who would remain a lifelong friend.

The Railway Crossing, 1919, oil on canvas, 53.8 x 64.8 cm, The Art Institute of Chicago
The "mechanical" works Lger painted in the 1920s, in their formal clarity as well as in their
subject matterthe mother and child, the female nude, figures in an ordered landscapeare
typical of the postwar "return to order" in the arts, and link him to the tradition of French
figurative painting represented by Poussin and Corot.[6] In his paysages anims (animated
landscapes) of 1921, figures and animals exist harmoniously in landscapes made up of
streamlined forms. The frontal compositions, firm contours, and smoothly blended colors of
these paintings frequently recall the works of Henri Rousseau, an artist Lger greatly admired
and whom he had met in 1909.
They also share traits with the work of Le Corbusier and Amde Ozenfant who together had
founded Purism, a style intended as a rational, mathematically based corrective to the
impulsiveness of cubism. Combining the classical with the modern, Lger's Nude on a Red
Background (1927) depicts a monumental, expressionless woman, machinelike in form and
color. His still life compositions from this period are dominated by stable, interlocking
rectangular formations in vertical and horizontal orientation. The Siphon of 1924, a still life
based on an advertisement in the popular press for the aperitif Campari, represents the highwater mark of the Purist aesthetic in Lger's work.[7] Its balanced composition and fluted shapes
suggestive of classical columns are brought together with a quasi-cinematic close-up of a hand
holding a bottle.

Fernand Lger (sitting) with Ken Nack in Paris in 1950

As an enthusiast of the modern, Lger was greatly attracted to cinema, and for a time he
considered giving up painting for filmmaking.[8] In 192324 he designed the set for the
laboratory scene in Marcel L'Herbier's L'Inhumaine (The Inhuman One). In 1924, in

collaboration with Dudley Murphy, George Antheil, and Man Ray, Lger produced and directed
the iconic and Futurism-influenced film, Ballet Mcanique (Mechanical Ballet). Neither abstract
nor narrative, it is a series of images of a woman's lips and teeth, close-up shots of ordinary
objects, and repeated images of human activities and machines in rhythmic movement.[9]
In collaboration with Amde Ozenfant he established a free school where he taught from 1924,
with Alexandra Exter and Marie Laurencin. He produced the first of his "mural paintings",
influenced by Le Corbusier's theories, in 1925. Intended to be incorporated into polychrome
architecture, they are among his most abstract paintings, featuring flat areas of color that appear
to advance or recede.[10]
Starting in 1927, the character of Lger's work gradually changed as organic and irregular forms
assumed greater importance.[11] The figural style that emerged in the 1930s is fully displayed in
the Two Sisters of 1935, and in several versions of Adam and Eve.[12] With characteristic humor,
he portrayed Adam in a striped bathing suit, or sporting a tattoo.
In 1931, Leger visited New York City and decorated Nelson Rockefeller's apartment.[13] In 1935,
the Museum of Modern Art in New York City presented an exhibition of his work.
During World War II Lger lived in the United States, where he found inspiration in the novel
sight of industrial refuse in the landscape. The shock of juxtaposed natural forms and mechanical
elements, the "tons of abandoned machines with flowers cropping up from within, and birds
perching on top of them" exemplified what he called the "law of contrast".[14] His enthusiasm for
such contrasts resulted in such works as The Tree in the Ladder of 194344, and Romantic
Landscape of 1946. A major work of 1944, Three Musicians (Museum of Modern Art, New
York), reprises a composition of 1930. A folk-like composition reminiscent of Rousseau, it
exploits the law of contrasts in its realistic juxtaposition of the three men and their instruments.

Stained-glass window at the Central University of Venezuela, c.1950s

Upon his return to France in 1945, he joined the Communist Party. During this period his work
became less abstract, and he produced many monumental figure compositions depicting scenes
of popular life featuring acrobats, builders, divers, and country outings. Art historian Charlotta
Kotik has written that Leger's "determination to depict the common man, as well as to create for
him, was a result of socialist theories widespread among the avant-garde both before and after
World War II. However, Lger's social conscience was not that of a fierce Marxist, but of a

passionate humanist".[15] His varied projects included book illustrations, murals, stained-glass
windows, mosaics, polychrome ceramic sculptures, and set and costume designs.
After the death of his wife in 1950, Lger married Nadia Khodossevitch in 1952. In his final
years he lectured in Bern, designed mosaics and stained-glass windows for the Central
University of Venezuela in Caracas, Venezuela, and painted Country Outing, The Camper, and
the series The Big Parade. In 1954 he began a project for a mosaic for the So Paulo Opera,
which he would not live to finish. Fernand Lger died at his home in 1955 and is buried in Gifsur-Yvette, Essonne.

[edit] Legacy
Lger wrote in 1945 that "the object in modern painting must become the main character and
overthrow the subject. If, in turn, the human form becomes an object, it can considerably liberate
possibilities for the modern artist." As he explained in a 1949 essay, by allowing the object to
replace the subject, "we were able to consider the human figure as a plastic value, not as a
sentimental value. That is why the human figure has remained willfully inexpressive throughout
the evolution of my work".[16] As the first painter to take as his idiom the imagery of the machine
age, and to make the objects of consumer society the subjects of his paintings, Lger has been
called a progenitor of Pop art.[17]
He was active as a teacher for many years. Among his pupils were Nadir Afonso, Robert
Colescott, Charlotte Gilbertson, Hananiah Harari, Asger Jorn, Michael Loew, Beverly Pepper,
Victor Reinganum, Marcel Mouly, George L. K. Morris and Charlotte Wankel.
In 1952, a pair of Lger murals was installed in the General Assembly Hall of the United Nations
headquarters in New York, New York. [18]
In 1960, the Muse Fernand Lger was opened in Biot, Alpes-Maritimes,France.
In November 2003, his painting, La femme en rouge et vert sold for $22,407,500 United States
dollars. Sales prices of his sculptures have exceeded 8 million dollars.
In August 2008, one of Lger's paintings owned by Wellesley College's Davis Museum, Mother
and Child, was reported missing. It is believed to have disappeared some time between April 9,
2007 and November 19, 2007. A $100,000 reward is being offered for information that leads to
the safe return of the painting.