Fernand Leger is in the spotlight at the Soulages Museum in Rodez for an exhibition, La vie à bras le corps .

Fernand Leger’s most famous painting

A retrospective of the work of Fernand Leger is offered at the Soulages Museum in Rodez through the exhibition, La vie à bras le corps. The exhibition brings together 86 of his works, including one of the most famous, The Mechanic, painted in 1918. From the Mechanic to The Country Party, it is indeed Léger’s favorite theses that are addressed here. Scenes of life where the characters are sometimes covered with large bands of colors. A particularity that finds its inspiration during a trip to New York. “He was walking with friends when he discovered the game of luminous neon lights which light up and light up and which will cross out the faces and bodies of his friends. Yellow, blue and red beams… He will remember all this and restore in his studio this visual phenomenon that fascinated him”, says Maurice Fréchuret, co-curator of the exhibition and specialist in Fernand Léger.

The city, the world of work, and leisure

The world of work and machines is not, with him, as with the Italian futurists, a subject of devotion, an object to be idolized but, more simply, the new element of a decor in which, there, life can find a way to reinvent itself. The sparkling barrel of the cannon glimpsed in the trenches of the Argonne is not, in his eyes, the terrifying instrument of death that we know but, on the contrary, an object whose plastic qualities he praises and which, paradoxically, serves to magnify life. The builders not only scaffold metal beams to erect the building but participate in the emergence of a world that Léger calls for and which cannot escape the humanism of his artistic project.

Fernand Leger proclaims life and reveals its beauty

At the Soulages museum, you will discover a coherent journey in time and space on the themes dear to Léger, the city, the world of work, leisure. The exhibition Fernand Léger, la vie à bras-le-corps offers paintings on canvas, works on paper, charcoal gouaches and Indian inks, documents and films : a collection of works from multiple French museums. Through his work, through color, vivid and contrasting forms, the themes he deals with (primarily in the context of daily existence), Fernand Léger proclaims life and reveals its beauty. He draws his inspiration in particular from the urban environment, the workplace, the world of leisure.

Exhibition Fernand Leger – Life at arm’s length From June 11 to November 6, 2022 SOULAGES MUSEUM Avenue Victor-Hugo – 12000 Rodez +33 5.65.73.82.60

https://musee-soulages-rodez.fr/oeuvres/fernand-leger-la-vie-a-bras-le-corps/