Retour 1936

Fernand Léger made this drawing, Retour, with graphite on paper. I love how Léger is working through things in his mind, working it all out through trial and error. It’s like he’s making sense of the world, almost engineering it with these strange tubular shapes floating around, and that architectural column thing. You can feel him thinking, questioning, and making it up as he goes. The texture of the graphite on paper gives the piece a raw, immediate feel, like a snapshot of Léger’s thought process. It makes me wonder, what was on his mind when he made this? Was he wrestling with ideas of returning to something, or maybe inventing something completely new? I see him in conversation with other artists, like Picasso, but also inventing a whole new language. It reminds me that art is not about definitive answers but about embracing ambiguity, about the messy, beautiful process of thinking, feeling, and making.