Light - The big black divers

Painter, creator of tapestry and stained glass cartoons, decorator, ceramist, sculptor, designer, illustrator, Fernand Léger (1881-1955) was one of the first to publicly exhibit works of cubist orientation, even if his style was sometimes described as "tubist". He went through different phases linked to impressionism, neo-impressionism and fauvism.

Most of Léger's paintings executed before 1910 were lost or destroyed by the artist himself. Strongly influenced by Paul Cézanne, represented at the Salon d'Automne in 1907, he distinguished himself from the cubism of Picasso and Braque by a systematic search for contrasts of forms pursued until 1914, but Léger's career was suddenly interrupted by the First World War in which he served as a soldier. His most important paintings of the decade, The Mona Lisa with Keys and The Blue Dancer from 1930, as well as Adam and Eve (1934), participate in a new realism close to the images sent by contemporary media, by their monumentality and their iconic character.

Following the Occupation of Paris, Léger went to the United States in 1940. One of his first American productions was devoted to stylized figures of divers ( Les Plongeurs polychromes, 1942-1946 and La Danse , 1942). Others followed on the theme of acrobats ( L'Acrobate dans le cirque , 1947-1948) and cyclists. Fernand Léger painted the first paintings in which color was completely independent of the drawing. The idea came to him when he saw the flashing illuminated advertisements in New York. The free use of spots of color emphasizes the movement of the characters shown here in a syncopated modern dance, an allusion to hectic American life.