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Lot Essay
The circus represented for Léger the epitome of modern spectacle and public entertainment and is one of the great themes that thread throughout his career. It was more than a commercial entertainment; it was a genuine art of the people. He closely identified with the circus performer. The acrobat was an artist, just as the modern artist, in his risky avant-garde calling, was no less an acrobat. It was fitting, then, that a male acrobat and his female partners were the subject of Léger's pivotal pre-war canvas Composition aux deux perroquets, 1935-1939 (Bauquier, no. 881). By the end of the 1920s, the discipline of the cubist grid no longer implemented any constraining effect on Léger's work. The acrobatic composition became the prototype that would guide Léger's art for the remainder of his career, and find ultimate fruition in La grande parade. Strong visual contrasts—in his imagery, forms and color – would henceforth interact on a monumental scale. His figure subjects actively celebrate the pleasures of life, as they participated in a new "outdoors" reality. Léger wrote to a friend in 1939: "We have all achieved a reality, an indoor reality—but there is perhaps another one possible, more outdoors...The new thing in this type of big picture is an intensity ten times greater than its predecessors. We can get this intensity by application of contrasts—pure tones and groupings of form... That is the solution for the big picture" (quoted in C. Lanchner, Fernand Léger, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1998, p. 145).
Léger painted the present work the year following the completion of Composition aux deux perroquets and the stacked acrobatic formation of the figures is clearly echoed in this composition. The bold black lines outlining each figure are heightened with the bold swatches of color, emphasizing the verticality of the work. 1940 was a transitional year for Léger, beginning in July as he began the negotiations to get his visa for the United States, finally arriving by the end of that year and would remain for five years in exile. Once Léger arrived in New York, he continued to work on the theme of the stacked figures, both in the acrobatic series and in his divers series, however the compositions would take on a much more crowded atmosphere (Bauquier, no. 1089; fig. 1), possibly influenced by the busy cosmopolitan surroundings of his new home.
Léger painted the present work the year following the completion of Composition aux deux perroquets and the stacked acrobatic formation of the figures is clearly echoed in this composition. The bold black lines outlining each figure are heightened with the bold swatches of color, emphasizing the verticality of the work. 1940 was a transitional year for Léger, beginning in July as he began the negotiations to get his visa for the United States, finally arriving by the end of that year and would remain for five years in exile. Once Léger arrived in New York, he continued to work on the theme of the stacked figures, both in the acrobatic series and in his divers series, however the compositions would take on a much more crowded atmosphere (Bauquier, no. 1089; fig. 1), possibly influenced by the busy cosmopolitan surroundings of his new home.