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FERNAND LÉGER (1881-1955) Les trois personnages signed and dated “F. LÉGER/20” (lower right); si...

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:5,000,000.00 - 7,000,000.00 USD
FERNAND LÉGER (1881-1955) Les trois personnages signed and dated “F. LÉGER/20” (lower right); si...

FERNAND LÉGER

(1881-1955)

Les trois personnages

signed and dated “F. LÉGER/20” (lower right); signed, dated, and inscribed “LES TROIS PERSONNAGES DEFINITIF / F. LEGER 20” (on the reverse)

oil on canvas

65 x 92.3 cm (25 5⁄8 x 36 3⁄8 in.)

painted in 1920

Estimate: £3,500,000–4,500,000

$5,000,000–7,000,000




Provenance

Daniel Henry Kahnweiler, Paris (acquired from the artist in 1920)

Galerie Simon, Paris

Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris

Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet, Stockholm (acquired from the above in 1950)

Private Collection, Sweden

Private Collection, Switzerland




Exhibited

Charlottenborg, Efterarsudstillingen, Léger, 1959, no. 5
Cologne, Galerie Gmurzynska, Fernand Léger Schlüsselwerke, April 27-June 22, 1990, pp. 34-35 (illustrated in colour)

Wolfsburg, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg and Basel, Kunstmuseum Basel, Fernand Léger 1911-1924, Le rythme de la vie moderne, May-November 1994, p. 245, no. 52 (illustrated in colour, p. 143)

Basel, Galerie Beyeler, “Who is afraid of red…?”, June-September, 1995, no. 3 (illustrated in colour)

Paris, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou; Madrid, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, and New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Fernand Léger, May 1997-May 1998, p. 93 (illustrated in colour)

Basel, Galerie Beyeler, Highlights, September-November 2000, p. 14, no. 22 (illustrated in colour on the catalogue cover)

Munich, Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Der kühle Blick-Der Realismus der ZwanzigerJahre in Europa und Amerika, June 1-September 2, 2001, p. 215 (illustrated in colour)

Grenoble, Musée de Grenoble, Le Purisme: L’Esprit nouveau à Paris 1918-1925, October 6, 2001-January 6, 2002, no. 32 (illustrated in colour, p. 39)




Literature

Georges Bauquier, Fernand Léger, Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint, 1920-1924, Paris, 1992, vol. II, p. 29, no. 207 (illustrated in colour)


<p>One of the most successful and beautifully resolved compositions of the period, Les trois personnages represents the perfect integration of abstract and figurative motifs. The strength of the composition is softened by the use of beautiful and lyrical colour harmonies. In terms of composition and colour, especially the use of the distinctive violet, close analogies can be drawn between this picture and the two versions of L’Aviateur which were painted during the same period (see Bauquier nos. 205-206). Writing of Léger’s work of the period Robert Buck comments:
“The human figure is viewed as harmonious and integral, even subdued, in its surroundings and not in any way out of place…Léger was also able to convey this harmony in his observation of the new urban landscape” (Robert Buck, Fernand Léger, exh. cat., Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, 1982, p. 33).
Léger vivdly described his use of figurative elements within an abstract matrix: “the human face and the human figure are no more important to me than keys or bicycles. They are valid three-dimensional objects to be used according to my choice…abstract art has given me complete freedom and therefore one thinks of the human face not in terms of its sentimental value but purely in terms of its three-dimensional value.” (Fernand Léger quoted in Pierre Descargues, Fernand Léger, Paris, 1955, p. 61).
The present canvas also anticipates one of the greatest achievements of Léger’s career, Le grand dÉjeuner of 1921 (Bauquier no. 311, fig. 1) and its related versions Le grand dÉjeuner (Bauquier no. 309) and Le petit dÉjeuner (Bauquier no. 310).
MoMA’s picture is dominated by three highly stylized female figures. The present painting, predating the MoMA picture by around one year, and dominated by three male figures, clearly prepared the thematic and stylistic ground for the larger canvas.
A return to the French classical tradition is to be found in Léger’s great interiors of the early 1920s, here as much as in Le grand dÉjeuner. During and after World War I many artists, led by Picasso’s example, sought solace in the ancestral traditions of painting after more than a decade of dizzying inventiveness and constant change. However, the particular importance of Léger’s work of this period is that he fused the classical tradition with the most stridently modern and distinctive pictorial vocabulary.
Peter de Francia has observed that “This period is also one in which Léger’s work slowly renews links with an older form of Western Painting that had become largely ignored since nineteenth century Impressionism: genre painting. The fact that a painting could contain a subject was no longer seen as heretical…Very little French painting, even while deluding itself otherwise, has ever escaped Poussin’s shadow…” (Peter de Francia, Fernand Léger, New Haven and London, 1983, pp. 78-79).
Léger’s style was, according to Robert Buck, the archetypal Modernist manner : “At that time (after 1918), his style, more than any other French artist of the period came close to employing the new international visual language, known in Paris as Purism” (Robert Buck, op. cit., p. 33).
Furthermore, Robert Heller described the humanism to be found in Léger’s work of the early 1920s as “a response to his growing feeling that the frenetic pace of modern life needed the discipline of calmness and order, a feeling he shared with Ozenfant, Le Corbusier and other artists in Paris” (Robert Herbert, Léger’s Le grand dÉjeuner, Minneapolis, 1980, p. 27).