Buste de femme c. 1939

Fernand Léger made this Buste de femme with bold colors and even bolder lines. You can almost feel him wrestling with the shapes, figuring out how they fit together. I imagine Léger stepping back, squinting, then diving in again with his brush. The black outline is so assertive, right? It's like he's daring the colors to stay within their boundaries. And those colors—red, yellow, green, a shock of blue—they pop against the tan background, each vying for attention. I wonder if he was thinking about industrialization when he made this. The way he breaks down the figure into geometric forms feels almost mechanical, like he's building a woman out of spare parts. But there's also something playful and human in the way he balances those hard edges with the soft curve of a flower and the oval shapes of a women's head and fruit. It makes me think about Picasso, Braque, and all those other artists who were pushing the boundaries of representation. We are always talking to each other, you know?