Les Femmes au perroquet 1952

Fernand Léger made this vibrant print, "Les Femmes au perroquet", with bold lines and flat planes of color, embracing the idea of artmaking as a straightforward process. It's like he's saying, "Here it is, no secrets." The colors are really striking, these distinct blocks of blue, yellow, and orange, and the way he uses solid black to define the forms is so graphic and modern. Look at the face of the woman with her hands raised; the blue flattens her features in a way that's both abstract and expressive. It is the way that the parrot is rendered, with simple lines, and bold colour planes, that speaks to the artist's interest in reduction and simplification. Léger reminds me a little of early Stuart Davis, in his enthusiasm for making art out of the everyday, but also someone like Matisse in the flattening of the picture plane. What did they see in each other's work, I wonder? Ultimately, this piece is about seeing and feeling the world in new ways.