VVFA Modern | Artists | Fernand Léger (French, 1881 - 1955)

Born on February 4, 1881 in Argentan, France, Joseph Fernand Henri Leger was originally apprenticed to an architect from 1897 to 1899. This allowed Leger to settle in Paris in 1900 as an architectural draftsman. In 1903 he attended classes at both the Ecole des Beaux-Arts Decoratifs and the Academie Julian. In 1907 Leger was greatly influenced by the works of Cezanne when he saw a large-scale exhibition of the latter at the Salon d’Automne. Leger held close ties with Matisse, Rousseau, and Apollinaire. In 1909 Leger developed a cubist style distinguished by reduction to the simplest basic forms and formal austerity linked with a pure, sharply contrasting palette. The artist exerted a large influence on both the developing movements of Cubism and Constructivism. By 1920, influenced by Purism and the form of retro Neo-Classicism practiced by Picasso, Léger had achieved a mechanistic classicism, a precise, geometrically and harshly definitive monumental rendering of modern objects such as cog-wheels and screws, with the human figure incorporated as an equally machine-like being. ? Surrealism also influenced Leger during the 1930’s as he began to loosen up his style making it more curvilinear. From 1940 to 1945 Leger taught at Yale University and Mills College. He passed away at Gof-sur-Yvette near Paris in 1955.