Les Constructeurs au vélo
1950
Joseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his…
Tall steel frameworks and men working on them. The thick, free lines of ink give the entire canvas a robust sense of immediacy.
The painter Fernand Léger is often said to have celebrated the 'beauty of machines', and that the humans depicted in his works were inorganic, robot-like beings. However, in this series painted in 1950, what he aimed for was quite the opposite.
In fact, he did not want to depict humans subservient to machines. Rather, he depicted humans striving for 'freedom' even within the rigid order of metal. For Léger, this was humanity triumphing over machinery.
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