The tubular joys of Fernand Léger

In 1914 Fernand Léger gave a lecture about modern art. By then recognised as a leading Cubist artist, he had the year before signed up with the dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, who already represented Picasso and Braque.

‘If pictorial expression has changed, it is because modern life has necessitated it,’ Léger argued. ‘The existence of modern creative people is much more intense and more complex than that of people in earlier centuries…The view through the window of the railway carriage or the motorcar windshield, combined with the speed, has altered the customary look of things. A modern man registers a hundred times more sensory impressions than an 18th-century artist.’

However, Léger’s attempts to find a way of depicting in paint this overwhelming plethora of impressions were rudely interrupted shortly afterwards. In August 1914, at the age of 33, he was called up to fight on the Western Front, where he served as a sapper and stretcher bearer.