Inspired by Fernand Léger

Fernand Léger was a French painter, sculptor and filmmaker. To present you with an overview of Léger's career, his early years saw him develop his own form of Cubism which he nicknamed “tubism". Such a style of painting later gave way to a more figurative and populist style. Later on in the artist's career, his works became considered as precursory to the Pop Art movement that, in the years following his death in 1955, saw an exponential growth. Léger, despite not being remembered as a key player in the Pop Art movement, certainly played a fundamental role in laying the brickwork for the movement in its early years.

Leger's Cubist works were engineerial in nature, said by some to entirely lack any poetical or lyrical quality. 1927, however, provided a turning point in the artist's outlook. Léger's work is said to have fundamentally altered with the inclusion of both organic and irregular forms. Emphasizing more figurative and contrasting figurations, his work became centered in complex juxtaposition and inference that differed from his previous work that relied on distinct binary opposition. It is not to be underestimated the impact of Léger's move to New York during World War II. Certainly we can observe a transitory phase in which color took on a more important role in his artistry. Léger is said to have been inspired by his new found surroundings in which he found the neon lights of the city particularly entrancing. In this collection of artworks inspired by Léger, Artsper looks at some contemporary artists such as the textile artist Freddy, and Celine Alam whose works remind us of the artist and his conceptual understanding of art in the Post-War period.