Buste de femme c. 1939

Fernand Léger painted this "Buste de femme" with what looks like oil on paper, using a real primary-school palette of red, yellow, blue, green and black. It’s so matter-of-fact, right? Look how the forms bump into each other. Léger builds up a face and body from these simple, blocky forms. I’m struck by the way he carves out the darks with such crispness, like the heavy black line around the blue shape to the left of the figure. Everything’s clearly delineated, but at the same time, so flat, like he’s got a steamroller in his studio. It's like the painting of Picasso or Braque, but rendered in something closer to house paint. Léger was interested in everyday life and the beauty of machines. You can see that interest here, in the directness and simplicity of his marks, and his embrace of strong, unmodulated colour. He reminds me a bit of Stuart Davis, stripping things down to their bare essentials and finding a kind of visual poetry in the process. The image is open to change!