Women and Birds

Fernand Léger's "Women and Birds" (1940) is a pen and black ink drawing over graphite on tan laid paper, created during one of the most difficult years of the 20th century. In 1940, France fell to the German invasion, and Léger fled to the south of France before eventually going into exile in America. Yet this drawing shows no trace of the war's anxiety: it depicts a scene of women and birds, perhaps a pastoral or domestic subject that offered an escape from the horrors of the time. The pen and black ink technique is confident and fluid, the lines creating simplified forms that are recognizably Léger's. The figures of the women are rendered in the mechanical style that Léger had perfected over the previous two decades, but the birds introduce a note of organic life that softens the industrial precision. The graphite underdrawing suggests that Léger worked out the composition before committing to the more permanent ink. This drawing shows Léger's continued commitment to his distinctive vision even in the face of world-historical catastrophe.

Léger's work during the war years demonstrates the persistence of artistic vision in the face of historical crisis, showing an artist maintaining his commitment to formal values even as the world collapsed around him.

This ink drawing of women and birds shows Léger's distinctive vision persisting through the darkest year of World War II, the mechanical forms softened by the organic subject of birds in a pastoral setting.