Composition, dans l’usine 1918

Fernand Léger created "Composition, dans l’usine" using oil paint. The artwork presents an abstract, Constructivist vision of the industrialized world emerging in the early 20th century. Painted in the wake of the First World War, Léger’s composition captures the zeitgeist of the machine age. The geometric shapes and mechanical forms evoke the factory floor, a space typically gendered as masculine. In this context, the artwork confronts the impact of industrialization on human labor and identity. The artwork reduces the human form to its basic, geometric shapes, similar to the machines it is made to operate. Léger once said that the modern world was forging a new type of human - a mechanized one. The painting acts as a reflection on our relationship to machinery, and asks what it means to be human in an age of mass production and technological advancement.