Fernand Léger

In this scene, the film’s main character (played by opera singer Georgette Leblanc) is taken to a scientist’s laboratory to be revived after a deadly snake bite. The set’s reduced geometries and whirring mechanics were designed by Fernand Léger (note its resemblance to his painting Three Women, on view nearby). Léger was just one of many figures from the Parisian art world invited to collaborate on this film, which L’Herbier envisioned as a “fairy story of modern decorative art”: architect Robert Mallet-Stevens, designer Pierre Chareau, fashion designer Paul Poiret, composer Darius Milhaud, and Ballets Suédois choreographer Jean Börlin all contributed elements.

Three Women offers a machine-age update to a time-honored subject in the history of painting: the group portrait of female nudes in repose. In this monumental canvas, a self-possessed trio, flanked by a black dog, luxuriates around a coffee table in a chic, modern apartment. Their bodies consist of clusters of spheres and sharply contoured forms precisely shaded so that their silver and ocher skin as well as their slick, sideswept hair gleam like sheet metal. The features of these anonymous, impassive women, who gaze unflinchingly at the viewer, appear interchangeable, like mass-produced machine parts. The concatenation of bodies offsets a lushly vibrant domestic interior filled with brightly colored decor, stylized furniture, and an acutely slanted, dazzlingly patterned floor. The gridded background of interlocking angles and curvilinear forms gives the painting a shallow, mural-like appearance.

Léger had emerged from his experience as a combat engineer in the French army during World War I with a strong conviction in the beauty of modern machinery. The machinelike precision with which the figures in Three Women are rendered, and their seamless integration with their setting, reflects Léger’s singular vision of a harmonious reconciliation between man and machine in the modern era.

This work is included in the Provenance Research Project, which investigates the ownership history of works in MoMA's collection.

1921, Fernand Léger, Paris.

1921 - April 27, 1923, Léonce Rosenberg (Galerie L’effort modern), Paris, acquired from the artist.

April 27, 1923 - at least 1925, Fernand Léger, Paris, received back from Léonce Rosenberg.

By 1928 - 1942, Paul Rosenberg, Paris, New York, probably acquired from the artist.

1942, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, purchased from Paul Rosenberg.

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