Fernand léger art style
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Throughout his life and career, Fernand Léger consistently sought to capture in his art the dynamism and constantly changing conditions of modern life. He dabbled in painterly abstraction and with a mechanical aesthetic, exhibited with the Cubists and Purists, and experimented with media as diverse as painting, drawing, works on paper, muralism, set design, book illustration, ceramics, and film. As an artist and art teacher, his examinations and interrogations of modernism played a significant role for future generations of twentieth-century artists.
Born on February 4, 1881, in Normandy, France, Léger grew up in a family of cattle farmers who discouraged his interest in an artistic career. He worked as an architectural apprentice in Caen from 1897 to 1899 before moving to Paris in 1900. There he supported his artistic training by working as an architectural draftsman and photography retoucher. Although he was rejected by the École des Beaux-Arts, Léger studied painting as an unenrolled student under the French academic painter Jean-Léon Gérôme () until 1904. His approach to fo
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Summary of Fernand Léger
Though Fernand Léger built his reputation as a Cubist, his style varied considerably from decade to decade, fluctuating between figuration and abstraction and showing influence from a wide range of sources. Léger worked in a variety of media including paint, ceramic, film, theater and dance sets, glass, print, and book arts. While his style varied, his work was consistently graphic, favoring primary colors, pattern, and bold form.
Accomplishments
- Léger embraced the Cubist notion of fracturing objects into geometric shapes, but retained an interest in depicting the illusion of three-dimensionality. Léger's unique brand of Cubism was also distinguished by his focus on cylindrical form and his use of robot-like human figures that expressed harmony between humans and machines.
- Influenced by the chaos of urban spaces and his interest in brilliant, primary color, Léger sought to express the noise, dynamism, and speed of new technology and machinery often creating a sense of movement in his paintings that captured the optimism of the pre-World War I period
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Fernand Léger - Biography
Considered one of the great figures of modern art, Fernand Léger is a French painter whose rich and coherent work spans the first half of the 20th century.
1881-1917
From birth to combat: the Cubist effervescence
Nothing predestined Fernand Léger, the son of a Norman cattle breeder, to become a leading figure in the Parisian avant-garde. Not very studious but a good draughtsman, he worked as an apprentice to an architect in Caen.At the age of 19, he went to Paris and studied with the painter Gérôme at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. In 1907, a decisive year for him, Léger moved to La Ruche in the artistic effervescence of Montparnasse, where he became friends with Robert Delaunay, Marc Chagall, Blaise Cendrars...
Introduced to cubism by Cézanne, he quickly forged his own style on the fringes of Braque and Picasso's research. In order to transcribe the dynamism of his time, he developed a painting based on contrasts of form and colour, the keystone of his aesthetic which no later development would call into question.He exhibited at the Salons
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