Fernand Léger

Fernand Léger was born in Normandy in 1881. After training with an architect in Caen, he moved to Paris in 1900 to pursue his artistic education. In 1909 he settled at La Ruche, a community of artists where he encountered Robert Delaunay and Marc Chagall. Influenced by Cubism, he developed a distinctive visual language built around cylindrical forms and mechanical volumes, later described as Tubism. During the First World War, he served at the front and was hospitalised in 1916 after being exposed to gas at Verdun. The experience reinforced his interest in the relationship between human figures and machines, explored in works such as La Partie de cartes (1917) and Les Trois Femmes (1920). In the early 1920s, he engaged with Purism and expanded his work into film, illustration and theatre. In 1924 he co-directed Ballet mécanique with Dudley Murphy, an experimental film shaped by the rhythms and imagery of modern life. Léger also designed stage sets, stained-glass windows and mosaics. After joining the French Communist Party in 1945, he increasingly turned to working-class subjects and sought to bring art into everyday life. He died in Gif-sur-Yvette, France, in 1955.

Guillaume Apollinaire / Marc Chagall / Robert Delaunay