Lithograph on velin d'Arches paper. Paper size: 16.63 x 12.69 inches. Excellent condition. Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Notes: From the folio, Cirque, Lithographies Originales, 1950. Published by Les Editions Verve, Paris, under the direction of Teriade, editeur, Paris; printed by Mourlot Freres, Paris, October 5, 1950. Excerpted from the folio (translated from French), "Cirque" is entirely composed, handwritten text and illustrations, of original lithographs by Fernand Leger. This album was produced by Fernand Leger with the collaboration of Teriade and Marguerite Lang. It was completed printing on the presses de Mourlot Freres, on October 5, 1950, for Les Editions Verve, Paris. The edition of this album includes II, CCLXXX examples numbered from I to CCLXXX and XX hors-commerce examples. Numbered from I to XX. All examples, on velin d'Arches, are signed by the artist [on the colophon]. Catalogue raisonne reference: Leger, F., & Saphire, L. (1978). Fernand Leger : the complete graphic work. Blue Moon Press, 44-106. History of the edition: Cirque was originally conceived as a collaboration between Fernand Leger and the novelist Henry Miller. At a time when the two were interested in working together, the publisher Efstratios Teriade Leger approached Leger to make prints for an artist's book. Teriade hoped to publish a series of such books with the circus as the theme. Leger was a circus enthusiast who often used circus images in his paintings. He often went to the Cirque Medrano in Paris and the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus in New York. He agreed to the project and suggested that Miller write the text. Miller wrote a tragic tale of a disenchanted clown (published as The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder), which Teriade rejected. He had published two earlier circus-related projects, Rouault's Divertissement and Matisse's Jazz. Both artists had written their texts, so he asked Leger to write Cirque. Leger wrote about life and art framed within the context of the circle, which he saw as symbolic of wholeness, continuity and freedom. To Leger the circus and the circle were inseparable: "What is a circus if not a machine that produces circles? ...acrobats, horseback riders, bicycles, clowns, animals-on a perfectly round ring ...Go to the circus, quit your rectangles...and you go to the land of circles in action." FERNAND LEGER (1881-1955) was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of cubism (known as "tubism") which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style. His boldly simplified treatment of modern subject matter has caused him to be regarded as a forerunner of pop art. Leger was born in Argentan, Orne, Lower Normandy, where his father raised cattle. Fernand Leger initially trained as an architect from 1897 to 1899, before moving in 1900 to Paris, where he supported himself as an architectural draftsman. After military service in Versailles, Yvelines, in 1902-1903, he enrolled at the School of Decorative Arts after his application to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts was rejected. He nevertheless attended the Beaux-Arts as a non-enrolled student, spending what he described as "three empty and useless years" studying with Gerome and others, while also studying at the Academie Julian. He began to work seriously as a painter only at the age of 25. At this point his work showed the influence of impressionism, as seen in Le Jardin de ma mere (My Mother's Garden) of 1905, one of the few paintings from this period that he did not later destroy. A new emphasis on drawing and geometry appeared in Leger's work after he saw the Cezanne retrospective at the Salon d'Automne in 1907. In 1909, he moved to Montparnasse and met Alexander Archipenko, Jacques Lipchitz, Marc Chagall, Joseph Csaky and Robert Delaunay. In 1910, he exhibited at the Salon d'Automne in the same room (salle VIII) as Jean Metzinger and Henri Le Fauconnier. In his major painting of this period, Nudes in the Forest, Leger displays a personal form of Cubism that his critics termed "Tubism" for its emphasis on cylindrical forms. In 1911, the hanging committee of the Salon des Independants placed together the painters identified as 'Cubists'. Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Le Fauconnier, Delaunay and Leger were responsible for revealing Cubism to the general public for the first time as an organized group. The following year he again exhibited at the Salon d'Automne and Independants with the Cubists, and joined with several artists, including Le Fauconnier, Metzinger, Gleizes, Francis Picabia and the Duchamp brothers, Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Marcel Duchamp to form the Puteaux Group-also called the Section d'Or (The Golden Section) paintings, from then until 1914, became increasingly abstract. Their tubular, conical, and cubed forms are laconically rendered in rough patches of primary colors plus green, black and white, as seen in the series of paintings with the title Contrasting Forms. Leger made no use of the collage technique pioneered by Braque and Picasso.

Excellent condition