Sixty Works by Modern Masters - Flipbook - Page 45
Fernand Léger
Fernand Léger
French, 1881 - 1955
Les Deux Sœurs, 1929
Oil on canvas
36¼ x 25 inches / 92 x 65 cm
Signed lower right: F. Léger
Throughout his career, Léger sought
to paint the human figure, and
particularly the female form, in a
manner unlike that of any other
great modern master. The present
work, realised in the late 1920s, sees
the artist move away from his early
examples of abstraction towards
his trademark style of tubular
representation.
The monumentality and classical
flavour of Léger’s figures in Les Deux
Sœurs resonates with Jean Cocteau’s
plea, following the social and
political upheavals of the First World
War, for artists to embrace a ‘rappel
à l’ordre’ (a ‘return to order’) in their
work.
44
Provenance
Mme Bourdon, Paris
Anon. sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 25 March 1990, lot 46
Acquired at the above sale by the previous owner
Literature
Georges Bauquier, Fernand Léger: Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint
1929-1931, vol IV, Paris, 1995, no. 669, p. 114, illustrated p. 115
"Man needs colour to live; it’s just
as necessary an element as fire and
water."