.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
'The war was a major event for me. There was a supra-poetic atmosphere at the front. It excited me to the core.'
Léger, quoted in G. Néret, F. Léger, trans. S.D. Resnick, London, 1993, p. 66.
Fernand Léger’s Dessin de guerre certainly delights in a ‘supra-poetic’ evocation of form and line. Executed circa 1915, the work serves as a memento of Léger’s experience in the First World War, which began when he was conscripted into the engineering corps in August 1914.
The work has a fascinating provenance and was a gift from Léger to the Russian avant-garde power couple Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova. Dedicated to the artists, the work shows Léger paying tribute to the artistic prowess of his friends, whom he had met around 1914 when they were visiting Paris to work with Diaghilev on ‘Le Coq d’Or’. It is also possible to see a visual synergy between the cubo-futurist forms pioneered by Goncharova, and the dynamic tessellated lines and shapes created by Léger. Léger creates a fusion of Cubism and Futurism; the analysis of form recalls Cubism, while the interspersed lines convey the intoxication with speed and energy found in Futurism.
It is likely the present work relates to the Battle of Verdun, and was sent to the Russian avant-garde artists by Léger at the front line. As a result of the war, Léger developed a heightened sensitivity towards objects, and a new appreciation of their value. This is brought to the fore in the present work: forms dominate the space creating an ‘all-over’ pictorial puzzle. Depicting a cusine roulante (field kitchen), Dessin de guerre captures the locomotive power and dynamism of the domestic accoutrements of warfare. The circular forms evoke the mechanical, while the subdued palette is indicative of the camouflaged nature of warfare. The present work is dynamic, poetical and deeply personal.
Léger, quoted in G. Néret, F. Léger, trans. S.D. Resnick, London, 1993, p. 66.
Fernand Léger’s Dessin de guerre certainly delights in a ‘supra-poetic’ evocation of form and line. Executed circa 1915, the work serves as a memento of Léger’s experience in the First World War, which began when he was conscripted into the engineering corps in August 1914.
The work has a fascinating provenance and was a gift from Léger to the Russian avant-garde power couple Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova. Dedicated to the artists, the work shows Léger paying tribute to the artistic prowess of his friends, whom he had met around 1914 when they were visiting Paris to work with Diaghilev on ‘Le Coq d’Or’. It is also possible to see a visual synergy between the cubo-futurist forms pioneered by Goncharova, and the dynamic tessellated lines and shapes created by Léger. Léger creates a fusion of Cubism and Futurism; the analysis of form recalls Cubism, while the interspersed lines convey the intoxication with speed and energy found in Futurism.
It is likely the present work relates to the Battle of Verdun, and was sent to the Russian avant-garde artists by Léger at the front line. As a result of the war, Léger developed a heightened sensitivity towards objects, and a new appreciation of their value. This is brought to the fore in the present work: forms dominate the space creating an ‘all-over’ pictorial puzzle. Depicting a cusine roulante (field kitchen), Dessin de guerre captures the locomotive power and dynamism of the domestic accoutrements of warfare. The circular forms evoke the mechanical, while the subdued palette is indicative of the camouflaged nature of warfare. The present work is dynamic, poetical and deeply personal.