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Lot Essay
TWO GOUACHES FROM THE SERIES ‘LES PLONGEURS’ BY FERNAND LEGER
Fleeing the Second World War and a regime hostile to avant-garde artists, Fernand Léger sailed from Marseille for the United States in 1940, not to return to France until 1945. He lived mainly in New York but made several trips across the country, including San Francisco, where he was invited by Arthur Neumeyer to teach at Mills College at the same time as John Cage and Merce Cunningham. This five-year exile and the contact with American culture, in the summer of 1941, was to have a significant influence on the artist. Fernand Léger started working on Les Plongeurs series before his departure; this would, in the American melting pot, result in one of the most significant series of works of his career. At this time, Leger was already an established artist; with Les Plongeurs series he reinvented his art and opened the way to new forms of representation that would define his much celebrated post-war style.
Nevertheless, Léger himself did not want to admit that America had had a decisive influence on his work and justified himself by saying: ‘My work continues and develops completely independently of my geographical location. What I paint here could have been done in Paris or London. The environment does not influence me in any way. The work of art is the product of an inner state and owes nothing to the external picturesque. Perhaps the pace of New York or the climatic ambience allows me to work “more quickly” - that’s all’ (Fernand Léger quoted in J. Cassou & J. Leymarie, Fernand Léger Drawings and Gouaches, London, 1973, p. 225). Despite his words, it seems clear to us that, after several trips to the United States in the 1930s, and that long five year exile during the War, an artist like Leger, fascinated by the modern world, urban life and machines, could not have remained indifferent and impervious to the hectic atmosphere of American cities.
It was specifically in September 1940, while waiting to embark on a ship that would take him from Marseille to Lisbon, from which he would thereafter sail to New York, that Fernand Léger watched some Dockers diving off the quay and swimming in the harbour during a break from their labours. This became the impetus for the artist’s Les Plongeurs series. Leger later wrote: ‘I was immediately impressed by the trajectory of their bronzed bodies in the sunlight and the water. A wonderful, fluid movement. It was those divers who set off all the rest, the acrobats, the cyclists, the musicians.’ (Fernand Léger quoted in J. Cassou & J. Leymarie, op. cit, p. 151).
Fleeing the Second World War and a regime hostile to avant-garde artists, Fernand Léger sailed from Marseille for the United States in 1940, not to return to France until 1945. He lived mainly in New York but made several trips across the country, including San Francisco, where he was invited by Arthur Neumeyer to teach at Mills College at the same time as John Cage and Merce Cunningham. This five-year exile and the contact with American culture, in the summer of 1941, was to have a significant influence on the artist. Fernand Léger started working on Les Plongeurs series before his departure; this would, in the American melting pot, result in one of the most significant series of works of his career. At this time, Leger was already an established artist; with Les Plongeurs series he reinvented his art and opened the way to new forms of representation that would define his much celebrated post-war style.
Nevertheless, Léger himself did not want to admit that America had had a decisive influence on his work and justified himself by saying: ‘My work continues and develops completely independently of my geographical location. What I paint here could have been done in Paris or London. The environment does not influence me in any way. The work of art is the product of an inner state and owes nothing to the external picturesque. Perhaps the pace of New York or the climatic ambience allows me to work “more quickly” - that’s all’ (Fernand Léger quoted in J. Cassou & J. Leymarie, Fernand Léger Drawings and Gouaches, London, 1973, p. 225). Despite his words, it seems clear to us that, after several trips to the United States in the 1930s, and that long five year exile during the War, an artist like Leger, fascinated by the modern world, urban life and machines, could not have remained indifferent and impervious to the hectic atmosphere of American cities.
It was specifically in September 1940, while waiting to embark on a ship that would take him from Marseille to Lisbon, from which he would thereafter sail to New York, that Fernand Léger watched some Dockers diving off the quay and swimming in the harbour during a break from their labours. This became the impetus for the artist’s Les Plongeurs series. Leger later wrote: ‘I was immediately impressed by the trajectory of their bronzed bodies in the sunlight and the water. A wonderful, fluid movement. It was those divers who set off all the rest, the acrobats, the cyclists, the musicians.’ (Fernand Léger quoted in J. Cassou & J. Leymarie, op. cit, p. 151).