Breakfast 1921

Fernand Léger made this unnamed watercolour, ‘Breakfast’ sometime in the first half of the 20th century. Léger's known for his Cubist style, but here, the way he's layered washes of color, building up form with transparent and opaque marks, feels fresh. Look at how the blocks of color create the forms, almost like an assemblage. The texture's smooth, no real impasto here, but you can see the grain of the paper coming through in places. The black form snaking down the centre is a particularly strong presence, a really arresting compositional device. It’s all about making sense of things through shapes and forms. It reminds me a little of Picabia, who was doing similar stuff in the early 20th century, but Léger's got his own thing going on with the industrial vibe. It's an open conversation, this whole art thing, constantly riffing off each other, taking ideas, and twisting them into something new.