Trouville 1921

Fernand Léger made Trouville using oil on canvas. The colours are so grounded, like they've been pulled straight from the earth. You see these blues, reds and greens all broken up into a playful grid of hard-edged, geometric shapes. It’s like Léger is building the scene block by block, and colour by colour. It's interesting to see how the paint is applied – pretty smooth, almost like a sign painter’s work, and yet there's something so human about the way the figures are arranged and how they seem to be holding different objects, like gifts or offerings. Look at the way Léger renders the hands. They're like geometric mittens! It’s this type of abstraction that is echoed in the work of someone like Elizabeth Murray who was a playful genius. In the end, art is about seeing and thinking at the same time. And I think Léger’s work really encourages us to do just that.