Sixty Works by Modern Masters - Flipbook - Page 77
Fernand Léger
Fernand Léger
French, 1881 - 1955
Les Acrobates, 1952
Gouache on paper
15 x 15½ inches / 38.1 x 39.4 cm
Signed and dated lower right: F.L. 52
The themes of acrobats and the
circus frequently recur in Léger’s
oeuvre. He considered it of the
utmost importance that ordinary
citizens should have the opportunity
to enjoy life, and the circus
represented a leisure activity that
perfectly addressed this concern. As
a genuine art of the people, it could
both be performed and attended
by the common man, and Léger’s
extended series of paintings and
scrapbook drawings of acrobats and
circus scenes testify to the strong
symbolic value of these subjects.
The artist once implored people
to ‘go to the circus’ for it is ‘an
enormous bowl in which circular
forms unroll. Nothing stops,
everything is connected. The ring
dominates, commands, absorbs.
The circus is a rotation of masses,
people, animals, and objects.’ The
present work serves as one of Léger’s
enduring visual celebrations of the
circus spectacle.
Provenance
Private Collection, Paris
Jeffrey H. Loria Collection, New York
This painting is accompanied by a
certificate of authentication kindly
issued by Irus Hansma
"As long as the human body is considered a sentimental or
expressive value in painting, no evolution in picture of people
will be possible. Its development has been hindered by the
domination of the subject over the ages."
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