Étude pour ‘Les plongeurs’ 1941

Fernand Léger made this gouache painting, Étude pour ‘Les plongeurs’, at some point in his career, probably after a lot of trial and error and maybe a little intuitive feeling. It looks like he was thinking about bodies, but not in a realistic way. The figures are like, simplified, blocky, and painted in flat colors – yellow, blue, green, a kind of maroon-brown, black, some lavender-purple, and red. They're all jumbled together, overlapping like he’s trying to show movement, like in Cubism. But it is also his own take on a figurative subject, a new take on the classical. I wonder what he was thinking about when he made it? I can imagine him figuring out how to take the everyday and make it something new. It is flat, but feels like bodies. It’s a conversation, right? Léger is talking to other painters, like Matisse, like Picasso, but in his own voice. And now we’re part of that conversation, too.