Folding screen composed of three panels
Oil on canvas
197.5 x 89.5 cm
 

Donated by Nadia Léger and Georges Bauquier

Fernand Léger National Museum, Biot, Inv. MNFL 96011




In the 1930s, Léger’s interest in astronomical images led him to choose his motifs afresh, as is evidenced by this folding screen, the single piece of furniture he designed for his friend, the American painter and businessman Gerald Murphy. The screen, which is somewhat atypical of Léger’s work as a whole, confirms that the artist was distancing himself from geometric abstraction, surrealism and other movements in order to devote himself to the conquest of a new realism. Numerous preliminary drawings led to final placement of the soft shapes and distribution of the whites that create a strange luminosity throughout the composition. The screen was painted on a brown background on one side and a black background on the other. It was later divided into two, with the Fernand Léger National Museum possessing the recently restored reverse side.