Fernand Léger was born on February 4, 1881 in Argentan (in the Orne region of France) and died on August 17, 1955 in Gif-sur-Yvette (in the Essonne region). He was a French painter who also created cartoons for tapestries and stained-glass windows; he was a decorator, a ceramist, a sculptor, a draughtsman and an illustrator.

He was one of the first to publicly exhibit Cubist-oriented work.

Both his Normand roots, inherited from his farming father, and his outspokenness caused Fernand Léger to be referred to as “the peasant of the avant-garde".

First steps in art

At 19 years old, he discovered 1900 Paris, settled in the Montparnasse district and attended painting academies.

As early as 1903, Léger shared a studio with painter André Mare. In 1907, the retrospective exhibition devoted to Cézanne made a strong impression on him, as it did on many Paris painters, and definitively influenced his painting. The same year, he discovered Picasso’s and Braque's cubism.

Léger soon blended into the effervescence of Parisian artistic life and from 1908, he worked alongside Modigliani, Laurens, and especially Alexander Archipenko. In 1908, he moved into La Ruche (literally “the Beehive”), an artists’ residence in the Montparnasse district, and became friends with Blaise Cendrars, Max Jacob and Guillaume Apollinaire. He also interacted with such painters as Robert Delaunay, Marc Chagall, Chaïm Soutine, Chaim Jacob Lipchitz, Pierre Reverdy and Maurice Raynal.

Fernand Léger and cubism

He painted La Couseuse, in 1910, which marked the beginning of his cubist work. A cluster of geometric lines concentrated into a short space, the canvas is reminiscent of the massive figures Picasso painted that same year. However, with Nu dans la forêt (1909-1910), Léger introduced his own personal style of cubism, even though he certainly drew inspiration from Picasso’s work bearing the same title.

Léger was a keen and regular attendee of Medrano's circus and he painted acrobats, clowns, and jugglers whose "mechanized" bodies have the same value as objects and decorations.

Léger married Jeanne Lohy in 1919. They had met before the war in Parisian intellectual circles; Jeanne became his war godmother and maintained an abundant correspondence with him.

Fernand Léger: the art teacher

In 1924, his style grew more aligned with the purists and he contributed to the magazine L’Esprit nouveau.He founded the Academy of Modern Art at 86 rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs in Paris with Amédée Ozenfant who would teach there until 1928. It became the Academy of Contemporary Art in 1934.

In October 1940, Léger left Paris for Marseille from where he sailed to the United States. There, he taught at Yale University with Henri Focillon, Darius Milhaud and André Maurois.

A painter politically engaged

Fernand Léger joined the French Communist Party in 1945 and remained a member until the end of his life. In 1946, he reopened his studio on the Place Jules-Ferry in Montrouge.

His late carrer

In the early 1950s, Fernand Léger participated, alongside Jean Bazaine and Jean Le Moal, in the decoration of the Church of the Sacred Heart, built in a working-class district of Audincourt in the Doubs region of France. He designed the seventeen stained-glass windows situated in the nave and the choir, and drew the cartoons for the tapestry located behind the high altar.

In 1952, he married Nadia Khodossievitch.

Fernand Léger’s success after his death

A few months before his death in 1955, Fernand Léger had bought the Mas Saint-André, located at the foot of the village of Biot in the South of France. His widow In here Nadia Légerand his close collaborator Georges Bauquier decided to create a museum on that horticultural land to pay tribute to Fernand and to foster knowledge of his work.

The building integrates a huge mosaic on its façade, initially planned by Léger for the decoration of the Hanover stadium, but never to be completed.

In 1969, the founders donated the building, the land and a rich collection of over 300 works of art to the French State. André Malraux, Minister of State for Cultural Affairs, accepted the donation at an official event which ended with a gala held at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes.
Le musée Léger Léger became a national museum and, according to the terms of the donation, the founders remain directors for life.

Fernand Léger's bond with Normandy

Léger lived in Paris and died in Gif-sur-Yvette in the Essonne region of France, yet he was born and raised in Argentan in Normandy, and he never severed his ties with his birthplace, as his paintings bear witness to.

In 1922, his mother bequeathed to him this farm in Lisores, where he would go and recharge his batteries every chance he got for over 30 years. He had an art studio there. In the 1970s, his wife Nadia Léger opened the house to the public. 40 years later, the art dealer Jean du Chatenet reactivated the project.

The beneficiaries and holders of the moral rights of Fernand Léger, who are descendants of Nadia Léger and who chair the Comité Léger, inform professionals and amateurs of the art world that, to date, no authorization has been given to a third party for the publication of a “catalogue raisonné” of works on paper by Fernand Léger.

Should you wish to have something appraised, simply send your enquiry to contact@comiteleger.fr