.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
In a lecture given at the Kunsthaus in Zurich in 1933 titled “Architecture and Life,” Léger praised the art of the past, in which “pictorial art was closely linked to architecture, through mosaics and frescoes. Artists were bound by architectural constraints, it was the great order of antiquity that I wish to see reappear” (quoted in Y. Brunnhammer, op. cit., 2005, p. 147). At the time of his death in 1955, Léger had conceived a number of such monumental architectural projects. Léger’s assistant, Georges Bauquier, and his widow, Nadia Léger, subsequently oversaw the execution of several, including ceramic and mosaic murals for the façades of the Gaz de France factory in Alfortville and the Musée National Fernand Léger in Biot. As Yvonne Brunnhammer has written, “Georges Bauquier and Nadia Léger, the official directors of the museum under contract to the state, were determined to breathe life into the dreams that Fernand Léger had not had time to realise” (ibid.).
The mosaics for Gaz de France were executed by Lino Melano, an Italian mosaicist. After Lino’s death, Bauquier commissioned Lino’s wife, Heidi Melano, to complete another project: a series of unique, large-scale mosaics after Léger’s most iconic figurative paintings. Heidi translated Léger’s large figure paintings from the 1920s—figures outlined in thick black lines against bold, minimal backgrounds—into glass and stone. The present work, La mère et l'enfant, is an interpretation of Les deux figures (Nus sur fond rouge) of 1923, housed at the Kunstmuseum Basel.
Léger’s La mère et l'enfant depicts two kneeling, tubular nude figures with glossy, rippling black hair. Thought they are thoroughly modern and secular, their iconic frontality and monumentality invoke Byzantine mosaics depicting the Virgin and Child. Perhaps the most celebrated example is the Theotokos (Mother of God) embedded in the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. As did those 12th-century mosaicists, Heidi Melano rendered Léger’s mother and child with tiny, irregular pieces of tesserae—fragments of shiny black glass, iridescent gray and silver stones. These tesserae, meticulously arranged, cohere from a distance to create the impression of Léger’s subtly-molded three-dimensional forms.
The mosaics for Gaz de France were executed by Lino Melano, an Italian mosaicist. After Lino’s death, Bauquier commissioned Lino’s wife, Heidi Melano, to complete another project: a series of unique, large-scale mosaics after Léger’s most iconic figurative paintings. Heidi translated Léger’s large figure paintings from the 1920s—figures outlined in thick black lines against bold, minimal backgrounds—into glass and stone. The present work, La mère et l'enfant, is an interpretation of Les deux figures (Nus sur fond rouge) of 1923, housed at the Kunstmuseum Basel.
Léger’s La mère et l'enfant depicts two kneeling, tubular nude figures with glossy, rippling black hair. Thought they are thoroughly modern and secular, their iconic frontality and monumentality invoke Byzantine mosaics depicting the Virgin and Child. Perhaps the most celebrated example is the Theotokos (Mother of God) embedded in the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. As did those 12th-century mosaicists, Heidi Melano rendered Léger’s mother and child with tiny, irregular pieces of tesserae—fragments of shiny black glass, iridescent gray and silver stones. These tesserae, meticulously arranged, cohere from a distance to create the impression of Léger’s subtly-molded three-dimensional forms.