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465
●
FERNAND LÉGER
La Lecture
.
Pencil on cream wove paper, circa 1924.
278x315 mm; 11x12
1
/
2
inches. Initialed
in pencil, lower right recto. Ex-collection
Nadia Léger, Paris; acquired from the
above by Robert Prouté, Paris; private
collection, London; private collection,
NewYork.
The current drawing is a pencil study for
the same-titled painting from 1924, now
in the Musée National d’Art Moderne,
Centre Georges Pompidou,Paris (inventory
number AM 3718 P), see also lot 466.
Léger (1881-1955) made several pencil
drawings in preparation for this iconic oil
painting. One of these studies was with
the Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris,
Etude pour
La Lecture
, pencil on paper, 1923 (Cassou/
Leymarie,
Léger: Drawings and Gouaches
,
New York, 1973, number 97, and later
donated to the Musée National d’Art
Moderne,Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
Another study for the painting is now at
the Lille Métropole Musée d’Art Moderne,
d’Art Contemporain et d’Art Brut, Ascq.
A study for
La Lecture
, pencil on paper,
squared for transfer, circa 1923, was also
offered at Sotheby’s, London, in 2004..
According to the Musée National d’Art
Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou,“In
Leger’s
La Lecture
, the two impersonal,
frontally presented and monumental-
looking figures are examples of what
Léger called ‘object figures,’ not so much
human creatures as complexes of visual
and formal elements.The artist has in fact
structured the work around a series of
contrasts and repetitions, with echoes
and tensions between horizontal and
vertical masses, rounded and angular
forms, hot and cold colours, a clothed
body and naked body. Caught in this
contrapuntal rhythm, the women seem
like the gears and cranks of a powerful
machine, stilled in a curious timelessness.”
[100,000/150,000]