Fernand Léger

Fernand Léger (France, 1881–1955) trained as an architect in Caen and, after moving to Paris in 1900, worked as an architectural draftsman and attended the painting academies of Gérôme and Gabriel Ferrier. His body of work spanned painting, mural art, sculpture, stained glass, mosaics, and tapestries.

After turning away from Impressionism, he associated with the Cubist painters and developed a style that combined geometry, color, and figuration. The series *Contrastes de formas* (1913) steered his work toward more abstract approaches. His subsequent “Machinist period” reflected the aesthetics of machinery and the urban landscape of Paris; beginning with *Composition with Three Figures* (1932), he delved deeper into the representation of the human figure and his approach to classicism.

He exhibited with the Puteaux group at the Section d’Or salons. "Composition with Three Figures" is in the collection of the Centre Pompidou–Musée national d’art moderne in Paris, and the Fernand-Léger National Museum in Biot holds more than 450 of his works. His work is also represented in the collections of MoMA, the Tate Modern, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, and the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza.