Skip to main content
The ever-legible Leger
CHRISTINE LINDEY pays tribute to an outstanding artist whose work always aimed to be accessible
(R to L) The Homage to Louis David, 1948-9 and The Three Musicians, 1930

AN EXACT contemporary of Picasso, Fernand Leger was born in 1881 in the Normandy market town of Argentan to an argumentative cattle merchant and a gentle mother.

 

He lost his father when he was very young and his widowed parent gradually lost most of their possessions. Although Leger’s heart was in painting, she apprenticed him to an architect when he turned 16, believing this to be a more respectable profession. This training in precise draughtsmanship served him well and shines through his mature works.

Liberation webinar, 30 November2024, 6pm (UK)
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
AIA
Exhibition Review / 7 November 2024
7 November 2024
CHRISTINE LINDEY welcomes a fascinating survey of the work of the communist and socialist artists who founded the AIA in the 1930s
exp web 1
Exhibition review / 28 June 2024
28 June 2024
CHRISTINE LINDEY guides us through the vivid expressionism of a significant but apolitical group of pre WWI artists in Germany
entangled 1
Exhibition review / 7 March 2024
7 March 2024
CHRISTINE LINDEY salutes an outstanding exhibition imbued with a sense of national guilt
kitaj 1
Exhibition Review / 22 November 2023
22 November 2023
CHRISTINE LINDEY surveys the cosmopolitan, enigmatic compositions of an idiosyncratic artist whose work speaks of mystery and exile