Study for Le Disque 1918

Fernand Léger made this study for Le Disque with paint of some kind, maybe gouache, or watercolor, you know, something that isn’t too thick. There is a real tenderness to the way Léger approaches color. It is both bold and a little uncertain. You can see the artist feeling his way through the composition, making decisions about where to place a block of red next to a stripe of yellow or blue. The surface has a chalky, almost matte quality, with the paint sitting on top of the paper. It’s interesting how the black curve dominates the composition, dividing the space and creating a sense of tension. There’s a real push and pull between the different elements, as if Léger is trying to find a way to balance the abstract and the representational. You might think of him in relation to someone like Stuart Davis, another artist who was interested in the relationship between abstraction and the urban environment. Ultimately, this study is an open-ended proposition, a moment of experimentation and discovery.