Bridge 1908

Fernand Léger’s painting, Bridge, is a landscape of forms rendered in oil paint. What strikes me is the way he’s built up this image. It's all about the process, the push and pull of color, with the texture of the paint barely smoothed out, so you can really see the physicality of it. Looking closely at the center, I’m seeing how the gray-greens and ochres create a kind of tension, not quite meshing, but somehow balanced. The shapes are smoothed, but still blocky and architectural. It makes me think of cubism, or even Cézanne’s landscapes—the way he broke everything down into shapes and planes. Léger takes this idea and gives it an industrial edge. But there is a softer color palette, which could be a nod to Impressionism, but the geometric construction feels super modern. It is this tension between different approaches that makes it so compelling to me.