"Les femmes au perroquet", 1952 / cast 2020

In “Les femmes au perroquet“, Léger looked back on his painterly masterpiece of the pre-war period, the ”Composition au perroquet“ (1935-1939, today at the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris). In this monumental, wall-sized painting, Léger created the paradigm for the pictorial concept that was to bear fruit in his magnificent post-war compositions, particularly with regard to his interest in monumental designs for exterior spaces. Léger wrote to a friend in 1939: “We have all achieved one reality, a reality indoors, but perhaps another is possible, more outdoors ... What is new about this kind of overall picture is that it is ten times more intense than... We can achieve this intensity by using contrasts, pure tones and groupings of forms ... This is the solution for the whole picture”.