This week’s find is a lithograph by the famous cubist master Fernand Léger, estimated to sell around €6,000 at Auctionata on July 11. 

Born 1881 in Argentina, Fernand Léger‘s first job was as an architectural draftsman. After his military service, he attended the École des Arts Décoratifs and the Académie Julian in Paris from 1903 to 1904. Léger was influenced by Paul Cézanne in his early career but his infatuation with Cubism created his signature style. Léger developed a characteristic reduced-cubistic style. Fascinated by the power and beauty of modern technology, the artist came to a geometrically defined and monumental representation of objects, such as gears or crankshafts, in which human beings also were included as machine-like objects. Surrealism also had a significant impact Fernand Léger’s work in the 1930s and 1940s. This work “La Lecture” shows the typical Léger style with cubified human figures holding a lecture with books in their hands.

Photo courtesy of the Auctionata website.