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A purpose to pleasure
Tate Liverpool's exhibition reveals the brilliance of Fernand Leger, one of the great painters of realist political art, says CHRISTINE LINDEY
ABC by Fernand Leeger, 1927

FERNAND LEGER (1881-1955) grasped life with insatiable optimism and a passion for ideas. He was born in Normandy to a belligerent cattle merchant who died during his early childhood, leaving an impoverished widow. She apprenticed the 16-year-old Leger to an architect, but, in 1900, he fulfilled his desire to study art in Paris, by supporting himself as an architectural draughtsman.

 

He had grasped the full significance of the recent revolutionary Cubist and Futurist innovations and used them to convey the modernity of urban life, with its simultaneous cacophony of sounds, speeding motorised vehicles and visual stimulation.

The Acrobat and his Partner by Fernand Leger, 1948
Young Girl Holding a Flower by Fernand Leger, 1954
Study for ‘The Constructors’ The Team at Rest by Fernand Leger, 1950
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