Fernand LÉGER (1881-1955)

Lot 25
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Estimation :
40000 - 60000 EUR
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Result : 52 000EUR
Fernand LÉGER (1881-1955)
Nature morte au samovar, 1952 Gouache, ink and pencil on paper, signed lower right 70 x 75 cm 29 9/16 x 29 17/32 in. Fernand Léger  Nature morte au samovar, 1952 Fernand Léger was born on February 4, 1881 in Argentan, in the Orne region. After several years in school, punctuated by successive dismissals for caricatures by his teachers, he finally entered an apprenticeship with an architect in Caen. An artist exploring a plurality of media, Fernand Léger was one of the precursors of Cubism. Painter, sculptor, ceramist, draughtsman or illustrator, the artist was ingenious in his search for new mediums. Often described as the "peasant of the avant-garde" for his Norman origins and his outspokenness, he was nevertheless one of the first to publicly exhibit his cubist works. When he was only 19, Fernand Léger met Paris and moved to La Ruche, in the artistic effervescence of Montparnasse, where he met Robert Delaunay and Marc Chagall. There he learned about cubism, observing the work of Cézanne, and developing his style by contemplating Braque and Picasso. Léger is a painter of modern life, cubism in vogue in the 1910s seduces him and convinces him to join his peers; Jean Metzinger and Henri le Fauconnier. Alongside them, Léger participated in a whole series of exhibitions in Paris, but also in Moscow and the Armory Show in New York in 1913. Fernand Léger distinguished himself from other cubists by imposing his visual style on the intellectual cubism of the Montmartre artists. His goal was to distinguish each object in its volume and form, in an ideal space. But the First World War broke out and Fernand Léger was sent to the front. The horror of the war and the fraternity of the soldiers upset him and gave him a new creative impetus. From 1930, with the arrival of the Popular Front, he expressed his political commitments through large mural frescoes and emphasized his decorative research, studying the contrasts of form and color. For the artist, painting must be accessible to all and wishes to break the privileges associated with it by inscribing his art in architecture. Fernand Léger composed numerous still life scenes, setting the scene with a particular object or color. The Samovar is a recurring motif in the artist's plates, which he strives to construct and deconstruct over the course of gouaches on paper. The Samovar presented here is complete, dominated by the yellow of his palette and overlooking a ship with a net spread out and a bottle of wine. Contrary to the artist's other Samovars, the two-color process of this gouache constitutes a singularity in his work.
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