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Lot Essay
Executed in 1925, Fernand Léger's Femme au vase perfectly encapsulates the atmosphere of rationality, harmony and beauty that characterised his involvement with the so-called Rappel à l'ordre, which came in the wake of the turmoil of the First World War. Léger himself had fought in the conflict, and therefore had all the more vested an interest in promoting an idea of art as a reflection of the new age of the machine, of science and technology. In this picture, he has managed to combine the crisp geometry of the background, which recalls both the paintings of Piet Mondrian and the blueprints of industrial design, with a subject that is infused with timelessness and classicism. The woman holding the vase has been rendered using circles, arcs and lines which have a machine-like precision, invoking the world of modernity which Léger's pictures so eloquently celebrate.
Femme au vase takes as its motif a subject that clearly meant a great deal to Léger as he had already explored it and would return to it again several times in the following years; examples in oils are held by the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen, which holds a 1924 work, as well as by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, which is home to a similar oil from 1927. Intriguingly, several of these better-known images show the woman against a blank background, whereas Femme au vase is filled with Art Deco stylings, revealing Léger's interest in architecture as well as art itself. This formed a part of his belief in the interconnectedness of these disciplines in creating the environments in which we live and work. In 1925, Léger's enthusiasm for this led to his becoming a cause célèbre in Paris, when at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs, he had been commissioned to create a wall design for a model interior of a French embassy. His use of an essentially abstract, colourful design provoked strong responses from conservative elements which themselves were countered by a vigorous debate in which Léger was thrust into the limelight, becoming a key figure associated with modern art in the public eye.
The quality of Femme au vase is evident from its distinguished provenance. It was formerly owned by Maja Sacher-Hoffmann. A keen philanthropist, she had been married firstly to one of the heirs of the La Roche corporation, and she became one of its key shareholders and a scion of one of the richest dynasties in Switzerland; she was then married to the musician Paul Sacher. Both were keen collectors as well as benefactors of numerous institutions. The picture subsequently belonged to the celebrated Swiss theatre director Werner Düggelin.
Femme au vase takes as its motif a subject that clearly meant a great deal to Léger as he had already explored it and would return to it again several times in the following years; examples in oils are held by the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen, which holds a 1924 work, as well as by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, which is home to a similar oil from 1927. Intriguingly, several of these better-known images show the woman against a blank background, whereas Femme au vase is filled with Art Deco stylings, revealing Léger's interest in architecture as well as art itself. This formed a part of his belief in the interconnectedness of these disciplines in creating the environments in which we live and work. In 1925, Léger's enthusiasm for this led to his becoming a cause célèbre in Paris, when at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs, he had been commissioned to create a wall design for a model interior of a French embassy. His use of an essentially abstract, colourful design provoked strong responses from conservative elements which themselves were countered by a vigorous debate in which Léger was thrust into the limelight, becoming a key figure associated with modern art in the public eye.
The quality of Femme au vase is evident from its distinguished provenance. It was formerly owned by Maja Sacher-Hoffmann. A keen philanthropist, she had been married firstly to one of the heirs of the La Roche corporation, and she became one of its key shareholders and a scion of one of the richest dynasties in Switzerland; she was then married to the musician Paul Sacher. Both were keen collectors as well as benefactors of numerous institutions. The picture subsequently belonged to the celebrated Swiss theatre director Werner Düggelin.