Composition 1930

Fernand Léger created this ‘Composition’ with oil on canvas. The stark contrasts in this painting are just amazing – grey against black, with jolts of yellow and red. It feels like Léger is wrestling with something, pushing and pulling shapes and colours into a kind of… not-quite harmony. I find it helpful to think of the canvas as a site of inquiry. Maybe he was thinking about machines, bodies, and how they fit together or don't, in this modern world. That blocky figure on the left – is it human? Is it a robot? And those wild, scribbly lines inside—are they guts, or wires? I love the ambiguous gestures here. Looking at this work, I see echoes of other artists who were grappling with similar ideas of space and form. Like him, all painters are in conversation and exchange of ideas across time, inspiring one another’s creativity. And, of course, that push-and-pull is what makes painting so alive.