Composition en rouge et noir (Composition in Red and Black)

Inscriptions

Signed and dated, lower right: 45 / F. LEGER; signed, dated, and inscribed, on reverse: Composition / en rouge et noir / F. LEGER / 45. [Labels on reverse of frame correspond to P.966.3]

Label

A vibrant red central circle with black wiggling protrusions dominates Composition in Red and Black. Behind it stand an abstracted cityscape, featuring paved roads and towering skyscrapers, as well as a tube-like form that exemplifies the artist’s treatment of the abstracted human figure. Fernand Léger can be described as a precursor to the late twentieth-century Pop Art movement, and the painting’s strong graphic quality and focus on everyday culture underscore that connection.

Always a proponent of modernity, and an early master of Cubist composition, Léger began to focus on the visual excitement of the machine age after World War I. Using bold color and strong black outlines, he started to depict industrial objects and city life. His streamlined factories and mechanomorphic forms denote power and potential energy. His thoughts on this approach reached an international audience in the early twenties with the publication of his personal manifesto, “The Aesthetics of the Machine: Manufactured Objects, Artisan and Artist” in 1923. As the decade progressed, Léger developed a mode of painting that combined his machine-inspired version of Cubism with Surrealism. He began to incorporate more organic and irregular shapes into his works, juxtaposing forms from everyday life with psychosexual dream imagery.

From the 2019 exhibition Cubism and Its Aftershocks, curated by John R. Stomberg Ph.D, Virginia Rice Kelsey 1961s Director

Course History

SART 31, Painting II, Tom Ferrara, Summer 2012

SART 25, Painting I, Tom Ferrara, Spring 2014

ARTH 41.02, 20th Century European Art 1900-1945, Katie Hornstein, Fall 2021

SART 25.01, Painting I, Danielle Genadry, Summer 2022

Exhibition History

A Space for Dialogue 22, Leger, Tanning, and Daura: Sexuality and Surrealism, Rose McClendon, Class of 2006, Special Intern, Main Lobby, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 16, 2004-January 3, 2005.

Churchill P. Lathrop Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, March 30-July 12, 2006.

Cubism and Its Aftershocks, Citrin Family Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 26, 2019-February 16, 2020.

Lobby, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 5-24, 1989.

Lobby, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, November 26, 2012-January 11, 2013.

Modern and Contemporary Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 26,2009-March 15, 2010.

Modernism: The Making of the 20th Century Vision, Harrington Gallery Teaching Exhibition, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, May 22-July 8, 1990.

Thank You, Wallace K. Harrison, Jaffe-Friede and Strauss Galleries, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, March 16-April 28, 1985.

Publication History

Jacquelyn Bass, Thank You, Wallace K. Harrison, Hanover, New Hampshire: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 1985, p.45, no.21.

George Bauquier, Fernand Leger: Catalogue raisonne, 1944-1948, Volume 7, Paris: Adrien Maeght Editeur, 2000, pp. 72-73, ill. p.73, Catalogue no. 1191

Brian P. Kennedy and Emily Shubert Burke, Modern and Contemporary Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2009 p.23, no.1.

John R. Stomberg, The Hood Now: Art and Inquiry at Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, 2019, p. 162, ill. plate no. 93.

Provenance

Collected by Ellen Hunt Milton Harrison (1903-1995) and Wallace K. Harrison (1895-1981); given to present collection, 1967.

Catalogue Raisonne

George Bauquier, Fernand Leger: Catalogue raisonne, 1944-1948, Volume 7, 2000, no. 1191

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