Fernand Leger

Joseph Fernand Henri Leger (February 4, 1881 - August 17, 1955) was an artist.

Born in the Argentan, Orne, Basse-Normandie Region of France, at age 19 Leger moved to the Montparnasse Quarter of Paris and supported himself as an architectural draftsman. His earliest known drawings were primarily influenced by Impressionism.

In 1911 he joined with several other artists to form the Puteaux Group, an offshoot of the Cubist movement. From then until 1914, Leger's work became increasingly abstract, and he started to limit his color to the primaries and black and white.

Leger served in the military during World War I where he almost died after being the victim of a mustard gas attack by the Germans. Following the war his "mechanical" period evolved, in which figures and objects are characterized by tubular, machinelike forms, began in 1917.

In 1935, the Museum of Modern Art in New York presented an exhibition of his work. Leger lived in the United States during World War II and returned to France in 1945. Before his passing, his varied projects included book illustrations, monumental figure paintings and murals, stained-glass windows, mosaics, polychrome ceramic sculptures, and set and costume designs.

Fernand Leger died at his home and is buried in the Cimetiere de Gif-sur-Yvette, Essonne, France.

In November of 2003, his painting, "La femme en rouge et vert" sold for US$22,407,500. His sculptures have been selling in excess of US$8 million.

In 1960 The Musee Fernand Leger was opened in Biot, Alpes-Maritimes, in the Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur Region of France.

The paintings are the excellent portrayal of the events and scenes that we see around us. The painters are the best cameras of the world. They reproduce many different types of pictures. They even draw imaginary pictures that do not exist in this world. We tend to use both thinned oil paints and dense oil paints. Masterpieces can be dyed more than once, but each time it may be different from the existing paintings.h

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