L'oiseau à la fleur

Léger’s L'oiseau à la fleur and L'enfant à l'oiseau jaune, two monumental ceramic reliefs from the collection of Sydell Miller, were both conceived in 1952, shortly after the artist began working in this medium. Léger’s experiments with ceramic murals, as with his mosaic projects, were rooted in a broader desire to expand the traditional notion the nature of art, to escape the canvas, to move his art on to everything from decorative objects to the walls of public spaces. Through Roland Brice, one of Léger’s former students and a master ceramicist, that he had come to understand the potential of ceramics to enlarge his own images.
Brice and his son Claude, also one of Léger's students, were instrumental in assisting the artist to create these works. Brice began by interpreting the patterns from the gouaches and the oil on canvas paintings that Léger made available to him. Brice considered the technical aspects of the production, while Léger conceived the design and endowed the works with color.
The resulting works, which successfully translated Léger’s unique painterly style into ceramic, represent a true collaboration between the two artists. Léger's infectious sense of fun and optimism is especially palpable in the decorative flowers and birds of L'oiseau à la fleur and in the wide, open face of the figure in L'enfant à l'oiseau. The artist's brilliant white grounds, primary color fields and bold black outlines—all of which characterize his greatest paintings—enhance the rich pictorial effect of the ceramics. Indeed, with each new ceramic, Léger reached a new understanding of form and color, as this medium offered an alternative dimension for his lyrical artistic expression.