Houses in the trees landscape n°3 1914

Fernand Léger made this painting with oil on canvas. He's not exactly following traditional landscape conventions, but the way he lays down the paint is key to understanding the image. The painting consists of arrangements of simplified forms that depict the houses and trees in the composition. The houses and trees are reduced to their most basic geometric shapes, and the forms are rendered in a limited palette of primary colors, mostly reds and blues. Léger applied these hues to create a sense of volume. The canvas isn’t completely covered by the painting but left raw in some areas. Léger was very interested in the visual language of industry, but he didn't want to create a cold, mechanical art. Instead, he sought to humanize the machine aesthetic, and that’s what he did when he created this painting.