The Сity 1919

Fernand Léger made this painting, ‘The City,’ in the early 20th century, I imagine with large brushes and a steady hand. It's a big painting, full of hard-edged shapes and colors that are like the sounds of a city – reds, purples, yellows, blacks, whites. I can imagine Léger wrestling with this canvas, trying to capture the energy of the modern world. The paint is laid on flat, but there’s depth in the way he overlaps shapes and colors, like the sounds of a city overlapping and bouncing off buildings. Look at how the lavender form dominates the center of the canvas, how it pulsates against the black and white ground. It’s not just a color, it's an interruption. And the other shapes, the ladders, the bodies, the windows – they’re all fighting for space, pushing against each other like people on a crowded street. You know? Léger was looking at the Futurists and Cubists at the time but carving out his own vision. He reminds me of Stuart Davis, maybe, or even Mondrian. Painting is always like this: one artist answering another, across time, in a visual conversation that never ends.