Fernand Leger The City 1919 Oil on Canvas, 7' 7" x 9' 1/2"

This is one of Leger’s earlier works. He began with an apprenticeship in Analytic Cubism, and with this he used lightly tinted planes, solid fixed shapes, and profiles that suggested machine-like parts. In this work, he uses light color and overlapping planes to represent the new and modern city that was beginning to emerge in the 20th century. He makes the planes appear as if they are coming at you in fragments, much like a city seems to the people in it. There are never clear and defined pictures in the city, rather the people see only fragments of what is passing by. Random pieces of billboards and stenciled figures appear to the viewer as they would if they were walking by and only seeing glimpses of the things that surrounded them. The figures that are shown are very robotic in nature. Leger took an urban event and used a cubist vocabulary to explain it.