Sixty Works by Modern Masters - Flipbook - Page 73
Fernand Léger
Fernand Léger
French, 1881 - 1955
Deux Bouteilles Jaunes sur Fond Rouge, 1950
Oil on canvas
25 x 21¼ inches / 65 x 53.5 cm
Signed and dated lower right: F. LEGER 50
Signed, titled and dated on the reverse: 2 bouteilles jaunes sûr un fond rouge F. Léger 50
This important late work by Léger is
exemplary of the artist’s transition,
during the late 1940s and early
1950s, away from abstraction
towards a more figurative style that
harked back to his aesthetic concerns
of the 1920s. Deux Bouteilles
Jaunes sur Fond Rouge sees the
artist revisiting his concentration
on geometric composition, order,
clarity and harmony, whilst tackling
a simple subject matter that would
appeal to all social groups.
The present work also recalls flavours
of the abstractions by Dutch painter
Piet Mondrian, whom Léger would
have met in either Paris or New York,
where both artists were working
during the 1930s and 1940s.
Provenance
Collection Sam Jaffé, Los Angeles
Waddington Galleries, London
Marlborough Fine Art, London (no. 4255)
Dr. Sherman Kay
Waddington Galleries, London (no. BWB 1070)
John McConnell, London
Anon. sale, Champin, Lombrail, Gautier, & Enghien, Paris, June 21, 1989, lot
20
Private collection
Anon. sale, Christie’s, London, February 5, 2002, lot 20
Acquired by the previous owner from the above sale
Exhibited
London, Marlborough Galleries, Aspects of Twentieth Century Art, 1963, no.
38, illustrated
Literature
Georges Bauquier, Fernand Leger: Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint
1949-1951, vol. VIII, Paris, 2003, no. 1385, illustrated in colour p. 115
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