The Reading by Fernand Léger

This magnificent composition from the purist period celebrates reading and rest in an atmosphere of great serenity. The elegantly stylized characters are staged in a work entitled “The Reading”. Fernand Léger favors here an aesthetic of order, measure, and classical harmony. This creation reflects the artist’s desire to represent modern humanity in moments of calm and intellectual complicity with great formal purity.

Two large human figures with smooth, tubular shapes occupy majestically the center of an indoor, ordered geometric space. On the left, a woman reclines against a comfortable blue cushion, holding an open book with brown ochre pages. On the right, a seated man facing forward holds another open book and stylized flowers with round yellow buds. Their faces, extremely simplified with refined black lines, express a deep and quiet concentration. Their massive sand-beige bodies contrast harmoniously with the flat blue and brown colors of the surrounding objects. The overall composition is perfectly structured by bold black lines and geometric planes.

The impeccable pictorial technique is characterized by color gradients that give the bodies a polished metallic appearance. The mastery of light and geometric shapes creates a sense of quiet monumentality. The artist succeeds in giving a universal dimension to an everyday scene.