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Biography of Fernand LégerName: Fernand LégerBirth Date: February 4, 1881 Death Date: August 17, 1955 Place of Birth: Argentan, France Nationality: French Gender: Male Occupations: painter Fernand Léger The French painter Fernand Léger (1881-1955) was one of the original cubists. The imagery of his mature paintings is concerned with the human figure in urban and technological environments.At the turn of the century Paris was the acknowledged center of the international art world, a locus of extraordinary intellectual and creative vitality. Numerous artistic styles reached fruition at this time, included Fauvism, postimpressionism, and Art Nouveau. Moreover, there were individual masters working in Paris during these years, most notably Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, who would affect the entire history of modern art. It was within this charged atmosphere that Fernand Léger began his career as a painter.Léger was born in Argentan, Normandy, on Feb. 4, 1881. In 1900 he moved to Paris, where he worked as an architectural draftsman and studied briefly at the École des Beaux-Arts. During this period he came under the …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…eacute;ger's style during these years, beginning actually in the late 1930s, shifted again. He continued to monumentalize his scale and to intensify his interest in the human figure. In many works, for instance, Romantic Landscape (1946) and Homage to David (1948-1949), he broke away from the shallow space of cubism, returning to a more classical figure and landscape imagery.When Léger returned to France, he settled at Gif-sur-Yvette near Paris. There he continued to work on his painting and on public commissions until his death on Aug. 17, 1955. Further Reading Two excellent exhibition catalogs on Léger are Katharine Kuh, Léger (1953), and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Fernand Léger: Five Themes and Variations (1962). A comprehensive survey of cubism, including Léger's relation to the movement, is Robert Rosenblum, Cubism and Twentieth-century Art (1961; rev. ed. 1966).Diehl, Gaston, F. Léger, New York: Crown Publishers, 1985. |