Les Constructeurs (final)

In the early 1950s, Fernand Léger produced the Constructeurs series. This piece is the most accomplished version of the eponymous series. Worried about how the modern artist can approach the people, he hangs his Constructeurs in the canteen of the Renault factories:

"At noon, the workers arrived. [...] Some of them were snickering. "Look at them, but they could never work those guys with hands like that" [...] Me, I listened to them and sadly swallowed my soup. Eight days later [...] the atmosphere had changed. The guys weren't laughing, they weren't looking at the paintings. Yet quite a few of them [...] would look up, glance at my paintings for a moment, then dive back into the plate. [...] And when I was about to leave, here's a guy who says to me: "You'll see [...] when we've removed the canvases, when they have the bare wall in front of them, they'll realize what your colors are [...]."

By using bold, luminous colors, Léger succeeds in creating a space of false perspectives. The composition is criss-crossed by endlessly upright beams, reaching no vanishing point. On these, the workers, like acrobats, defy the laws of balance and seem almost to float. On the right, the undulation of a rope contrasts with the lines formed by the beams and a movement associated with that of the clouds in the background. The stump of wood in the lower part of the picture seems to emerge from the canvas. This unusual, inert element recalls the importance of nature in the artist's work. Although Léger places no more importance on builders than on scaffolding, man now walks freely, freed from the constraints of technique.
The painter portrays characters who are more human and individualized than ever, as if to better contrast with the metal scaffolding:

"I wanted to render [...] the contrast between man and his inventions, between the worker and all this metal architecture, this iron, this scrap, these bolts, these rivets."

However, the human figure is treated here again as a mere object.