.Light

“The first draft of creation, for me, is instinctive. I never work directly on the canvas. I put my job together, study by study, piece by piece, like you put together an engine or a house. » Fernand Léger

Fernand Léger looking at his wire portrait made by Alexander Calder.

A priori, nothing brought Fernand Léger and Aimé Maeght together. Of course, they crossed paths in the exhibitions organized by the Communist Party at the Alhambra against Hitler. Of course, they saw each other during a lunch or two at the Colombe d'Or, in Saint-Paul... In 1940, in Marseille, Léger waited for a boat for America, but did not settle on the Coast Azure. He will have just enough time to design his famous Divers series. The United States where he already stayed to decorate Nelson Rockefeller's apartment in the 1930s. During his American stay, he taught at Yale University, then in 1952-53, he decorated a large room at the United Nations Palace in New York. It was only in May 1949, with the exhibition “Abstract Art” organized at the Maeght gallery by Andry-Farcy, curator of the Grenoble museum, and Michel Seuphor, that his collaboration with Maeght began. It includes the inventors of abstraction and the new generation (Braque, Duchamp, Gleizes, Larionov, Picabia, Picasso, Villon, Kandinsky, Arp, Delaunay, Kupka, etc.).

Fernand Léger, In Florence, December 31, 1956, gouache on paper, 48 x39 cm. Offered to Florence Maeght by Nadia Léger “for her coming into the world so that the colors of Fernand Léger bring her joy and happiness for the rest of her life”.

“I went to the United States to ask Léger to make the poster and the lithos for the catalogue,” Aimé confided one day. The exhibition constitutes the first inventory of abstraction, divided into two periods, six months apart. At that time, abstract art was still considered “suspicious”. Several big names in abstraction will also return to the figure. Fernand Léger returns there and anchors himself in reality as his Builders can testify. What the artist justifies: “There has been a lot of criticism of Art for Art's sake (that is to say without subject), and Abstract Art (that is to say without object), but it seems like their time is going to end. We are witnessing a return to the big subject, which is understandable to the people. » On this occasion, Léger executed two original lithographs for the issue of Derrière Le Miroir (No. 20-21). In November 1955, in homage to the deceased artist, the Gallery hung 22 paintings from 1920 to 1930. His wife Nadia remained linked to Marguerite and Aimé, they found themselves on the Côte d'Azur where Nadia built the Fernand Léger museum, in Biot.

View of the Fernand Léger exhibition at the Maeght Foundation, 1988.

“Fernand Léger — one of those men who knew how to stand up to their times and all that follows, to the rhythm of the swells of the weather, the violence of the wind and the high tides which pass over the dikes at the equinoxes.” Pierre Reverdy, Behind the Mirror, 1955.

Fernand Léger, Aimé Maeght, Nadia Léger, and Georges Bauquier in Gréolières-Les-Neiges, 1953.

Fernand Léger, Ceramics from the chapel of the Maeght Foundation, 1953, ceramic, 100x195 cm.

Fernand Léger, The Country Party, 1954, oil on canvas, 240x360 cm.

Aimé Maeght in front of the model of the Fernand Léger National Museum in Biot, 1958. The museum will be inaugurated in 1960.

Nadia Léger and Marguerite Maeght at the Maeght Foundation, 1974.

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