Fernand LégerComposition, Cirque (Saphire 44-106), Fernand Leger1950
1950
About the Item
- Creator:Fernand Léger (1881-1955, French)
- Creation Year:1950
- Dimensions:Height: 16.63 in (42.25 cm)Width: 12.69 in (32.24 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Auburn Hills, MI
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU1465213985402
Fernand Léger
A painter as well as a filmmaker, illustrator, stage-set designer, ceramicist and printmaker, Fernand Léger was one of the most prolific artists of the first half of the 20th century. His early mature work as a Cubist was marked by the use of bold colors and contrasts and a visual vocabulary inspired by industrial technology. In his later career, Léger turned to idiomatic, almost naïve depictions of human figures, in a belief that his work should be accessible to ordinary people and relevant to their lives.
Born in Normandy, the son of a cattle trader, Léger worked as an architectural draftsman in Paris while studying art. By 1908 he was a member of an artistic circle that included Marc Chagall, Robert Delaunay, sculptor Jacques Lipchitz, and the poet Guillaume Appolinaire, and through them he became connected to the Cubists. As opposed to the flat planes and neutral hues seen in the paintings of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, Léger’s Cubist abstractions were devised with vivid colors and forms that had dimensionality. Soon after his army service in World War I — he was gassed at the Battle of Verdun — Léger entered his “mechanical” period. Convinced that technology would improve the human condition, he painted compositions of tubular shapes and cylinders that are reminiscent of machine parts. In other work, Léger sought to capture the bustle and brio of modern life with references to railroad stations, factories, street signs and billboards.
Léger had also emerged from the trenches with a deep concern to make his art engage the sorts of men and women he had met during the war. He sought to bring his work to a wider audience through film, theater sets and book illustrations. In the 1920s, influenced by Purism — a variant on Cubism that promoted a simpler and more direct approach to forms and compositions — Léger produced a series of paintings depicting everyday objects: a soda siphon, an accordion, a guitar and vase. The human figure returned to his work. By 1930, pure abstraction disappeared almost completely from Léger’s art in favor of simple studies of people. Their boldly outlined forms, placed against a bright background, can be regarded as an assemblage of parts — yet in these representations of dancers, acrobats and folks on bicycles, Léger seems to be articulating a kind of kinship and affection. You will see from the works on offer why Fernand Léger is often regarded as the warmest and most humane of the great modern artists.
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- Composition, Cirque (Saphire 44-106), Fernand LegerBy Fernand LégerLocated in Auburn Hills, MIOriginal Limited Edition Lithograph on Arches paper. Edition: 300. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Excellent condition. Notes: From the volume, Cirque, Lithographies...Category
1950s Modern Landscape Prints
MaterialsLithograph
- Composition, Cirque (Saphire 44-106), Fernand LegerBy Fernand LégerLocated in Auburn Hills, MIOriginal Limited Edition Lithograph on Arches paper. Edition: 300. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Excellent condition. Notes: From the volume, Cirque, Lithographies originales. Published by Tériade Editeur, Les Éditions Verve, Paris; printed by Mourlot Freres, Paris, 1950. Cirque was originally conceived as a collaboration between Fernand Léger and the novelist Henry Miller. At a time when the two were interested in working together, the publisher Efstratios Tériade Léger approached Leger to make prints for an artist’s book. Tériade hoped to publish a series of such books with the circus as the theme. Léger was a circus enthusiast who often used circus images in his paintings. He often went to the Cirque Médrano in Paris and the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus...Category
1950s Modern Landscape Prints
MaterialsLithograph
- Composition, Cirque (Saphire 44-106), Fernand LegerBy Fernand LégerLocated in Auburn Hills, MIOriginal Limited Edition Lithograph on Arches paper. Edition: 300. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Excellent condition. Notes: From the volume, Cirque, Lithographies...Category
1950s Modern Landscape Prints
MaterialsLithograph
- Composition, Cirque (Saphire 44-106), Fernand LegerBy Fernand LégerLocated in Auburn Hills, MIOriginal Limited Edition Lithograph on vellum paper. Edition: 300. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Excellent condition. Notes: From the volume, Cirque, Lithographies...Category
1950s Modern Landscape Prints
MaterialsLithograph
- Kollwitz, Death seizes the Children (after)By Käthe KollwitzLocated in Auburn Hills, MILithograph on vélin paper. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the folio, Kathe Kollwitz, Ten Lithographs. Published by Henry C. Kleemann and...Category
1940s Modern Landscape Prints
MaterialsLithograph
- Composition, Cirque (Saphire 44-106), Fernand LegerBy Fernand LégerLocated in Auburn Hills, MIOriginal Limited Edition Lithograph on Arches paper. Edition: 300. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Excellent condition. Notes: From the volume, Cirque, Lithographies...Category
1950s Modern Landscape Prints
MaterialsLithograph
- Simka Simkhovitch WPA Artist Lithograph Island Beach 1933 American ModernistBy Simka SimkhovitchLocated in Surfside, FLSimka Simkhovitch (Russian/American 1893 - 1949) signed lithograph. Pencil signed and dated "S. Simkhovitch 1933" lower center. Title "Island Beach," in pencil lower left of sheet. Numbered "44/50" in pencil lower right. (it is either Island Beach Wisconsin or New Jersey) Simka Simkhovitch (Симха Файбусович Симхович) (aka Simka Faibusovich Simkhovich) (Novozybkov, Russia May 21, 1885 O.S./June 2, 1885 N.S.—Greenwich, Connecticut February 25, 1949) was a Ukrainian-Russian Jewish artist and immigrant to the United States. He painted theater scenery in his early career and then had several showings in galleries in New York City. Winning Works Progress Administration (WPA) commissions in the 1930s, he completed murals for the post offices in Jackson, Mississippi and Beaufort, North Carolina. His works are in the permanent collections of the Dallas Museum of Art, the National Museum of American Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Born outside Kyiv (Petrograd Ukraine) into a Jewish family who owned a small department store. During a severe case of measles when he was seven, Simcha Simchovitch sketched the views outside his window and decided to become an artist, over his father's objections. Beginning in 1905, he studied at the Grekov Odessa Art School and upon completion of his studies in 1911 received a recommendation to be admitted to the Imperial Academy of Arts. Though he enrolled to begin classes in architecture, painting, and sculpture at the Imperial Academy, he was dropped from the school roster in December because of the quota on the number of Jewish students and drafted into the army. Simchovitch served as a private in the 175th Infantry Regiment Baturyn [ru] until his demobilization in 1912. Re-enrolling in the Imperial Academy, he audited classes. Simka Simkhovitch exhibited paintings and sculptures in 1918 as part of an exhibition of Jewish artists and in 1919 placed 1st in the competition "The Great Russian Revolution" with a painting called "Russian Revolution" which was hung in the State Museum of Revolution. In 1922, Simkha Simkhovitch exhibited at the International Book Fair in Florence (Italian: Fiera Internazionale del Libro di Firenze). In 1924, Simkhovitch came to the United States to make illustrations for Soviet textbooks and decided to immigrate instead. Initially he supported himself by doing commercial art and a few portrait commissions. In 1927, he was hired to paint a screen for a scene in the play "The Command to Love" by Fritz Gottwald and Rudolph Lothar which was playing at the Longacre Theatre on Broadway. Art dealers began clamoring for the screen and Simkhovitch began a career as a screen painter for the theater. Catching the attention of the screenwriter, Ernest Pascal, he worked as an illustrator for Pascal, who then introduced him to gallery owner, Marie Sterner. Simkhovitch's works appeared at the Marie Sterner Gallery beginning with a 1927 exhibit and were repeated the following year. Simkhovitch had an exhibit in 1929 at Sterner's on circus paintings. In 1931, he held a showing of works at the Helen Hackett Gallery, in New York City and later that same year he was one of the featured artists of a special exhibit in San Francisco at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park. The exhibit was coordinated by Marie Sterner and included four watercolors, including one titled "Nudes". He is of the generation of Russian Soviet artists such as Isaac Pailes, Serge Charchoune, Marc Chagall, Chana Orloff, Isaac Ilyich Levitan, and Ossip Zadkine. In 1936, Simkhovitch was selected to complete the mural for the WPA Post office project in Jackson, Mississippi. The mural was hung in the post office and courthouse in 1938 depicted a plantation theme. Painted on the wall behind the judge’s bench, “Pursuits of Life in Mississippi”, a depiction of black workers engaged in manual labor amid scenes of white professionals and socialites, was eventually covered over in later years during renovations due to its stereotypical African American imagery. The following year, his painting "Holiday" won praise at an exhibition in Lincoln, Nebraska. In 1940, Simkhovitch's second WPA post office project was completed when four murals, "The Cape Lookout Lighthouse and the Orville W. Mail Boat", "The Wreck of the Crissie Wright", "Sand Ponies" and "Canada Geese" were installed in Beaufort, North Carolina. The works were commissioned in 1938 and did not generate the controversy that the Jackson mural had. The main mural is "The Wreck of the Crissie Wright" and depicts a shipwreck which had occurred in Beaufort in 1866. "The Cape Lookout Lighthouse and the Orville W. Mail Boat" depicted the lighthouse built in 1859 and the mail boat that was running mail during the time which Simkhovitch was there. The boat ran mail for the area until 1957. "Sand Ponies" shows the wild horses common to the North Carolina barrier islands and "Canada Geese" showed the importance of hunting and fishing in the area. All four murals were restored in the 1990s by Elisabeth Speight, daughter of two other WPA muralists, Francis Speight...Category
1930s American Modern Landscape Prints
MaterialsLithograph
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- The Sea - Lithograph After Utagawa Hiroshige - Mid 20th CenturyBy Utagawa HiroshigeLocated in Roma, ITThe Sea is a modern artwork realized in the Mid-20th Century. Mixed colored lithograph after a woodcut realized by the great Japanese artist Utagawa Hiroshige in the 19th century. ...Category
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- 'Financial District', New York City — 1930s American ModernismBy Howard Norton CookLocated in Myrtle Beach, SCHoward Cook, 'Financial District', lithograph, 1931, edition 75, Duffy 155. A fine, richly-inked impression, on cream wove paper, the full sheet with wide margins (2 3/4 to 5 5/8 inches), in excellent condition. Image size 13 5/16 x 10 3/8 inches (338 x 264 mm); sheet size 23 x 16 inches (584 x 406 mm). Matted to museum standards, unframed. Literature: 'American Master Prints from the Betty and Douglas Duffy Collection', the Trust for Museum Exhibitions, Washington, D.C., 1987. Collections: Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Library of Congress, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum. ABOUT THE ARTIST Howard Norton Cook (1901-1980) was one of the best-known of the second generation of artists who moved to Taos. A native of Massachusetts, he studied at the Art Students League in New York City and at the Woodstock Art Colony. Beginning his association with Taos in 1926, he became a resident of the community in the 1930s. During his career, he received two Guggenheim Fellowships and was elected an Academician in the National Academy of Design. He earned a national reputation as a painter, muralist, and printmaker. Cook’s work in the print mediums received acclaim early in his career with one-person exhibitions at the Denver Art Museum (1927) and the Museum of New Mexico (1928). He received numerous honors and awards over the years, including selection in best-of-the-year exhibitions sponsored by the American Institute of Graphics Arts, the Brooklyn Museum, the Society of American Etchers, and the Philadelphia Print Club. His first Guggenheim Fellowship took him to Taxco, Mexico in 1932 and 1933; his second in the following year enabled him to travel through the American South and Southwest. Cook painted murals for the Public Works of Art Project in 1933 and the Treasury Departments Art Program in 1935. The latter project, completed in Pittsburgh, received a Gold Medal from the Architectural League of New York. One of his most acclaimed commissions was a mural in the San Antonio Post Office in 1937. He and Barbara Latham settled in Talpa, south of Taos, in 1938 and remained there for over three decades. Cook volunteered in World War II as an Artist War Correspondent for the US Navy, where he was deployed in the Pacific. In 1943 he was appointed Leader of a War Art Unit...Category
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