Fernand Léger, Composition, Cirque (Saphire, N° 44-106), 1950

Description

Lithograph on vélin d’Arches paper. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the folio, Cirque, Lithographies Originales. … more Lithograph on vélin d’Arches paper. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the folio, Cirque, Lithographies Originales. Published by Les Éditions Verve, Paris, under the direction of Tériade, éditeur, Paris; printed by Mourlot Frères, Paris, October 5, 1950. Excerpted from the folio (translated from French), "Cirque" is entirely composed, handwritten text and illustrations, of original lithographs by Fernand Léger. This album was produced by Fernand Léger with the collaboration of Tériade and Marguerite Lang. It was completed printing on the presses de Mourlot Frères, on October 5, 1950, for Les Éditions Verve, Paris. The edition of this album includes two CCLXXX examples numbered from I to CCLXXX and XX hors-commerce examples. Numbered from I to XX. All examples, on vélin d'Arches, are signed by the artist [on the colophon].

Catalogue raisonné reference: Léger, F., & Saphire, L. (1978). Fernand Léger : the complete graphic work. Blue Moon Press, 44-106.

History of the edition: 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 in New York. He agreed to the project and suggested that Miller write the text. Miller wrote a tragic tale of a disenchanted clown (published as The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder), which Tériade rejected. He had published two earlier circus-related projects, Rouault’s Divertissement and Matisse’s Jazz. Both artists had written their texts, so he asked Léger to write Cirque. Léger wrote about life and art framed within the context of the circle, which he saw as symbolic of wholeness, continuity and freedom. To Léger the circus and the circle were inseparable: “What is a circus if not a machine that produces circles? …acrobats, horseback riders, bicycles, clowns, animals—on a perfectly round ring …Go to the circus, quit your rectangles…and you go to the land of circles in action.”

FERNAND LEGER (1881-1955) was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of cubism (known as "tubism") which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style. His boldly simplified treatment of modern subject matter has caused him to be regarded as a forerunner of pop art. Léger was born in Argentan, Orne, Lower Normandy, where his father raised cattle. Fernand Léger initially trained as an architect from 1897 to 1899, before moving in 1900 to Paris, where he supported himself as an architectural draftsman. After military service in Versailles, Yvelines, in 1902–1903, he enrolled at the School of Decorative Arts after his application to the École des Beaux-Arts was rejected. He nevertheless attended the Beaux-Arts as a non-enrolled student, spending what he described as "three empty and useless years" studying with Gérôme and others, while also studying at the Académie Julian. He began to work seriously as a painter only at the age of 25. At this point his work showed the influence of impressionism, as seen in Le Jardin de ma mère (My Mother's Garden) of 1905, one of the few paintings from this period that he did not later destroy. A new emphasis on drawing and geometry appeared in Léger's work after he saw the Cézanne retrospective at the Salon d'Automne in 1907. In 1909, he moved to Montparnasse and met Alexander Archipenko, Jacques Lipchitz, Marc Chagall, Joseph Csaky and Robert Delaunay. In 1910, he exhibited at the Salon d'Automne in the same room (salle VIII) as Jean Metzinger and Henri Le Fauconnier. In his major painting of this period, Nudes in the Forest, Léger displays a personal form of Cubism that his critics termed "Tubism" for its emphasis on cylindrical forms. In 1911, the hanging committee of the Salon des Indépendants placed together the painters identified as 'Cubists'. Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Le Fauconnier, Delaunay and Léger were responsible for revealing Cubism to the general public for the first time as an organized group. The following year he again exhibited at the Salon d'Automne and Indépendants with the Cubists, and joined with several artists, including Le Fauconnier, Metzinger, Gleizes, Francis Picabia and the Duchamp brothers, Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Marcel Duchamp to form the Puteaux Group—also called the Section d'Or (The Golden Section) paintings, from then until 1914, became increasingly abstract. Their tubular, conical, and cubed forms are laconically rendered in rough patches of primary colors plus green, black and white, as seen in the series of paintings with the title Contrasting Forms. Léger made no use of the collage technique pioneered by Braque and Picasso. less