La Roue de l’échelle 1947

This is Léger, with a ladder and a wheel; the usual suspects! It's hard to put a date on this piece, but it’s one of his paintings, and it’s made with oil on canvas. It's kind of miraculous how he puts together a world that’s so flat, with these round edges, tubular forms, and clunky shapes. I think of Philip Guston a little when I see this; they both share this way of working with geometric shapes in unexpected ways. Look at the way the colours work here, too – that muted yellow background, and then, bam! These jolts of red and green, like electrical currents running through the machine. It feels like he’s not just painting objects, but painting the energy that animates them. Léger paints like he’s building something, a structure, or a machine. Except it's all illusion, paint, and maybe that’s the magic of it.