17 - Fernand Léger

Fernand Léger Personnages dans un escalier 1914 Gouache and watercolour on firm tinted paper. 32 x 40.8 cm. Framed under glass. Monogrammed and dated 'F.L. 14' in black lower right. - In very good condition. Expert report by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Paris, dated 15 March 1966 Provenance Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler; Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris (until 1966); Sammlung Stephen & Susan W. Paine, Boston (1966-1989); Lempertz, Köln, Auktion 643, Kunst des XX. Jahrhunderts, 20 Nov. 1989, lot 372; Private collection, North Rhine-Westphalia Exhibitions Richard L. Feigen & Co., New York (label on frame backing); Salzburg 2002 (Rupertinum, Museum Moderner Kunst), Fernand Léger - L'esprit moderne, cat. no. III with colour ill. p. 49 Literature Giorgio di San Lazzaro, Hommage à Fernand Léger, XXe siècle, Paris 1971, with ill. p. 15 Museum-quality work from the most important phase of Léger’s oeuvre, which shaped synthetic cubism Fernand Léger was among the main protagonists of cubism, and in the 1910s he decisively shaped the new, so-called synthetic stage of its development. In contrast to the analytical cubism that preceded it, he assembled his motifs out of striking, abstractly geometric, individual forms. “Personnages dans un escalier” is from a phase in Léger’s work dealing with images of stairways: created in 1914, directly before the beginning of the First World War, they are among the highlights of his oeuvre. The artist used a variety of techniques to explore the subject of people in motion on a staircase. In addition to our work, the paintings from this phase include “L’escalier” (Kunstmuseum Basel, Bauquier 69, see comp. ill.) and “L’escalier (2e état)” (Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Bauquier 70), among others. It was not just Léger, other futurist and cubist painters found the subject of the stairway fascinating in many ways. It combines a rich formal repertoire of human as well as architectonic lines and volumes with the speed and dynamic movement that have profoundly shaped modern life and, with it, modern art. The numerous artists who turned to this theme placed varying degrees of emphasis on individual aspects. Marcel Duchamp, for example, primarily occupied himself with visually realising the idea of movement in his iconic, cubo-futurist painting “Nu descendant un escalier no. 2” from 1912. Fernand Léger, on the other hand, was seeking to combine the abstract formal idiom he had developed in 1913 in his series “Contraste de formes” with the theme of movement. That same year, he wrote: “The breathless, fragmented life of the present day demanded a dynamic divisionism as a means of expression” (cited in: Fernand Léger. Der Rhythmus des modernen Lebens, exh. cat. Wolfsburg/Basel 1994, p. 17). In contrast to the protagonists of early analytical cubism, who banished colour and volume from their works as much as possible, Léger was particularly interested in and focused on precisely these aspects. His work is characterised by the way in which it breaks organic and technical volumes down to the basic stereometric forms of cuboids, cylinders and cones while employing colour as a constructive element. His works are particularly defined by their elongated, pipe-like cylindrical forms, the “tubes”. The poet Blaise Cendrars described Léger’s significance for the development of cubism as early as 1919: “His pictures have already been generating a completely different effect than those of the other cubists since the period before the war. They were straightforwardly direct […], they did not aim for beauty, display, completion, and they always remained within the realm of visual representation. Léger [went] so far in his exploration of volumes and mass that he helped bring to life the Russian rayonism of Mikhail Larionov, on the one hand, and directly influenced the most outstanding painters of Italian futurism, on the other (cited in: op. cit., p. 18). In the work here, the people as well as the stairway they are ascending and descending have dissolved into nearly complete abstraction. It is occasionally possible to identify steps and railings, and human heads can be discerned but, beyond this, the composition stretches across the entire picture plane as a dense network of abstract, mechanistic individual elements. These elements, whose volumes are emphasised through the use of red, blue, grey and white, pile up on top of each other, push against one another and seem to be teetering. The composition as a whole is in a state of intense, scarcely fathomable movement and simultaneously exudes a sense of harmonious balance. This exceptional, excellently preserved work is of the finest provenance. The renowned German-French art dealer and art historian Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler was the most important promoter of the cubists in Paris. For parts of the 1910s, he exclusively represented Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Juan Gris and Fernand Léger. Pressured by the German occupation due to his Jewish heritage, he turned his gallery over to his step-daughter Louise Leiris in 1940, and she then continued to run it under her own name. After the war, the two of them jointly managed the gallery, which was known for its extraordinarily high-quality programme. “Personnages dans un escalier” is among the best works from Léger’s stylistically formative phase between 1913 and 1918, and these pieces are extremely rare on the art market.