?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 8,000
FERNAND LÉGER Deux Hommes (Soldats à Verdun).
Pen and ink on paper, circa 1915-16. 280x227 mm; 11x9 inches. Initialed in ink, lower right recto.
Provenance: Sold Christie's, New York, November 12, 1996, sale 7933, lot 85; private collection, New York.
From 1914 to 1917, Léger (1881-1955) fought on the front-lines during World War I at Argonne and Verdun. Afterwards he reflected on his experience: "I was stunned by the sight of the breech of a 75 millimeter in the sunlight. It was the magic of light on the white metal . . . The crudeness, variety, humor, and downright perfection of certain men around me, their precise sense of utilitarian reality and its application in the midst of the life-and-death drama we were in . . . made me want to paint in slang with all its color and mobility." The war marked a significant turning-point in Léger's work; from abstract and cubist works, he transitioned to what became known as his "mechanical period." Industrial and machine-like objects came to the forefront of his artwork and he noted, "I wanted brightness and intensity, so I used the machine, as others use the nude or the still life." The current drawing and others like it by Léger in the mid-1910s, shows his shift from Cubism to what the art critic Louis Vauxcelles coined as "Tubism" particularly in his figures and objects such as wagons, machinery and trenches which were common on the front lines in World War I.
