Roll up …
Fernand Léger was fascinated by the circus when he created this late piece in 1948. A champion of “the people” in his work since his time in the first world war trenches, he saw the big top’s bright lights, music and daredevil performers as a riveting art for all.
In a spin …
Typically, this painting is structured around contrasts. The acrobat is a whirl of curves, reflected in the flower and the disc – a call-back to his early abstract paintings. The sharp diagonals of ladder and chair offset this, while his partner stands as still and noble as one of the early kouros statues of ancient Greece.
The tube …
Léger’s duo are not lithe sprites but earthy, thick-bodied contortionists, whose limbs recall the tubular forms of his earliest cubist work, dubbed “tubism” by his peers.
Pop goes the easel …
Long compelled to channel the world of everyday people, Leger was a Communist party member when he painted this. His interest in popular entertainment, the city’s billboards and neon lights, however, also mark him out as a progenitor of pop art.
Fernand Léger: New Times, New Pleasures, Tate Liverpool, to 17 March
