Daily Artwork — “Three Women, Fernand Léger, 1921”

Use the images posted in this feature for writing prompts, warm-up activities, drawing templates or as part of an artwork critique.

1921 — Three Women. Oil on canvas. Cubism style. Fernand Léger (1881 – 1955).  Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, USA.

This painting represents a group of three reclining nudes drinking tea or coffee in a chic apartment. While the reclining nude is a common subject in art history, these women’s bodies have been simplified into rounded and dislocated forms, their skin not soft but firm, buffed, and polished. The machinelike precision and solidity with which Léger renders human form relates to his faith in modern industry and to his hope that art and the machine age would together reverse the chaos unleashed by World War I. (MoMA)

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