Les trois femmes au bouquet 1922

Fernand Léger made this painting of three women and a vase of flowers in oil, but I feel like he could have been working with metal or clay. Léger was all about simplifying things, turning figures into geometric shapes. Look at the way he's painted the bodies, almost like they're made of smooth, rounded blocks. It's like he's building the figures from an instruction manual but each component is made of the softest, yielding material. I'm thinking about what it would have been like to stand in front of the canvas, pushing colors around, trying to find that balance between flatness and depth. There’s a stillness to this painting, but also this playful energy. I wonder if he thought about these figures as objects in a still life, or as modern goddesses. There’s something eternal about this scene. It makes me think of Picasso, Braque, all those folks trying to break things down and build them back up in new ways. They were all bouncing ideas off each other, pushing the limits of what painting could do. I like to think that conversation is still happening, and that we can all join in.