Masterpiece 2022

South Grounds, The Royal Hospital Chelsea, London, SW3 4LW, 30 June - 6 July 2022

Fernand Léger

Étude pour les plongeurs, 1942

Gouache on paper

19 x 25 in
48.3 x 63.5 cm

Signed with the artist’s monogram and dated F.L. 42 (lower right)
Signed and dedicated on verso (upper left) 'à Frankanow amicalement F. Léger'

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Fernand Léger (1881-1955) was born in Argentan, Normandy and was apprenticed to an architect in Caen between 1897 and 1899. He then worked as a draughtsman in an architect’s office in Paris between 1900 and 1902, and in a photographic studio, retouching photos in 1903-1904. In 1903, he failed the entrance examination for the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and studied instead at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs and the Académie Julian. From 1909 he was associated with the Cubists and became a member of the informal Puteaux Group two years later. In 1913, he signed a contract with Daniel-H. Kahnweiler who had already discovered Picasso and Braque. During his Cubist period his tubular and curvilinear abstractions contrasted with the rectilinear forms produced by these painters and he became the first of the Cubists to experiment with non-figurative abstraction. After having been gassed during the First World War, he was discharged in 1917 and became a close friend of Le Corbusier and Ozenfant. He collaborated with Ozenfant in the Atelier Libre and in 1925 he exhibited at Le Corbusier’s Pavilion de I’Esprit Nouveau. During his collaboration with the leaders of the Purist movement his works exemplified the “machine aesthetic” which Purism exemplified. His paintings were static, with the precise and polished appearance of machinery, and he had a strong inclination for including representations of mechanical parts. During the late 1920s and 1930s he also painted single objects isolated in space and sometimes amplified to gigantic size. He also produced theatrical decors, especially for the Swedish Ballets, and worked in film. His Ballet Mechanic (1934) was the first film without a script. During the Second World War Léger lived in the U.S and taught at Yale University and at Mills College, California. His painting at this time consisted of compositions featuring mainly acrobats and cyclists. After his return to France in 1945 his works reflected more prominently his political interest in the working classes. But their static, monumental style remained, with flat and pure colours, heavy black contours and a continuing concern with the contrast between cylindrical and rectilinear forms. A Léger Museum was founded in his honour at Biot with large ceramic panels that he designed. Memorial retrospective exhibitions took place at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, in 1956 and at the Haus der Kunst, Munich, in 1957.

"...What did I see? Not five or six divers, but at least two hundred of them. I could not make out any longer to whom this head, this leg, or that arm belonged. So, I also scattered the limbs all over in my paintings..." (Fernand Léger, quoted in Sabine Rewald, Twentieth-century Modern Masters, New York, 1989).

In the fall of 1939, Léger was forced to flee Paris and go south to Marseille, where he could catch the boat to his new exile, arriving in the US in November 1940. Léger allegedly came across divers leaping into the Mediterranean Sea while waiting for a boat at Marseilles. The sight of them diving into the water became an inspiration which would carry throughout his work made in exile, including the present work. This fascination would culminate in his later images of divers, including the monumental The Great Divers Black (1944) in the Centre Pompidou, which bears a striking compositional similarly to the present work and was made two years earlier.

When Léger first arrived in America, he stayed at the University Club in New York City where he had little room to paint, forcing him to work on smaller scale and often on paper. Following a teaching stint at Mills College in California, Léger returned to New York by 1942 where he was reportedly inspired by the advertising spotlights on Broadway that would suddenly illuminate pedestrians in a rainbow of colors: standing on the street, a man would turn blue then red or yellow. He would later remark, "America has added color to my palette" (Léger, quoted in Art: Machine Age, Paris Style, Time Magazine, 1946.)

In 1942, the year of the present work, Léger refined his approach to depicting the divers: no longer but an entangled jumble of arms and legs, his figures were delineated by thick black outlines and a flat, stylistic application of color that would come to be a hallmark of his most celebrated work. His museum collections include the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Musée national Fernand Léger in Biot, France.

Provenance

This artwork was acquired sometime before 1962 by Myrtil Frank, a well-known art dealer active in the city of Den Haag in the Netherlands and in Manhattan, New York. It remained in the Myrtil and Flory Frank collection until both passed away.

• 1982, by descent to Dorrit Hilda Frank, daughter of Flory and Myrtil Frank, New York

• 2014, by descent to Lisa Lempel-Sander and Elliot Sander, New York Exhibition History

Exhibitions

This artwork was exhibited at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York in an exhibition titled Fernand Leger, Five Themes and Variations in 1962. On page 20 of the catalogue is the following annotation: STUDY FOR THE DIVERS, (ETUDE POUR LES PLONGEURS). 1942. Gouache, 19 x 25”, Collection Mr. and Mrs. Myrtil Frank, New York. On page 23 of the catalogue is a photograph of the artwork