On the occasion of the centenary of the Great War, the Fernand Léger National Museum in Biot presents an exhibition on Fernand Léger and the Great War.
Mobilised in the Engineers in 1914, Fernand Léger remained a private until 1917, when he was hospitalised and then discharged. First a sapper and then a stretcher-bearer, he was posted to the Argonne and Verdun. The exhibition shows the war as seen by Fernand Léger but also the impact it had on his work in the early 1920s.
The exhibition opens with the vibrantly coloured painting entitled Le 14 juillet (The 14th of July) produced before his mobilisation, but the artist then spent four years drawing in greyness in his notebooks. Unable to paint, the artist produced numerous drawings, including a recent acquisition, Paysage en Argonne, which is featured in the exhibition. These drawings, with their geometric style, embody the cubist vision of the world initiated in 1910 and adapted to a new iconography: the battered landscapes of north-eastern France.
The war was also a human experience, a founding one for Léger. The rich correspondence he maintained with those close to him who remained behind: Louis Poughon, a childhood friend, and Jeanne Lohy, his future wife, help us understand this. At the heart of the exhibition, a listening room created by the students of the Pasteur vocational high school in Nice, allows us to hear these texts read by the students of the international high school in Valbonne. This exceptional testimony allows us to understand the dimension of the war experience: while he lived in the worst conditions alongside his trench mates, Fernand Léger never ceased to express his admiration for them. Close to them, he discovered the social function of art.
From 1917 onwards, Léger returned to colour with the representation of the Herbal Tea Pot, an omnipresent object that he drew in the hospital in Villepinte before painting it in 1918, in the colourful décor of the house in Vernon where he spent his convalescence. This work, on loan from the Musée National d'Art Moderne - Centre Georges Pompidou, is a striking example. This period marked the beginning of a new plastic language, which moved away from the abstraction of his cubist period. The exhibition also evokes the post-war period with works from Léger's mechanical period. Exacerbated by the war, modern beauty became a source of inspiration for the demobilised artist.
In the auditorium, the broadcasting of a "cinema for the ear" offers a contemporary look at the war thanks to the acousmatic work Potentiel de terre created specifically by Diane Blondeau and Simon Nicolas, young graduates of the Villa Arson, Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Art de Nice.
The exhibition has received the label of the Mission du Centenaire 14-18 http://centenaire.org/fr/en-france/provence-alpes-cote-dazur/alpes-mari…
SLIDE SHOW ON THE CREATION OF THE LISTENING ROOM BY THE STUDENTS OF THE LYCEE PASTEUR
DOSSIER PEDAGOGIQUE ET BIBLIOGRAPHIE-SITOGRAPHIE
DOSSIER DE PRESSE
PROGRAMMATION CULTURELLE ET PEDAGOGIQUE
TEXTE D' ANNETTE BECKER
TRADUCTIONS DU COMMUNIQUE DE PRESSE
PARTENAIRES
-médiathèque Casa (conférence du 8 novembre à 15h et salon d'écoute du 4 au 29 novembre diffusant les enregistrements du Centre international de Valbonne) : http://www.mediatheque-casa.fr/a-mediatheque.net/cms/articleview/id_module/6/id/1155
-rectorat / Canopé site Mémoires des territoires :
exposition du musée Léger http://www.memoiresdesterritoires.fr/?page_id=2
formation enseignants du 10 novembre matin et vernissage enseignants samedi 22 novembre à 11h : http://www.memoiresdesterritoires.fr/?page_id=539
itinéraire d'un artiste pendant la Grande guerre Fernand Léger : http://www.memoiresdesterritoires.fr/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/itin%C3%A9raire-artiste.pdf
carte du réseau CANOPÉ : Fernand Léger au front
Légende : Fernand Léger, le 14 juillet, 1914, huile sur toile, 65.5 x58.5 cm, musée national Fernand Léger, donation de Nadia Léger et Georges Bauquier, copyright RMN-Grand Palais/Gérard Blot copyright Adagp, Paris 2014
Open every day except Tuesdays, 1 January, 1 May and 25 December.
From May to October
from 10am to 6pm
From November to April
from 10am to 5pm
Full price: 5.50€5
Reduced price: 4€
Group rate: 5 € (from 10 people) Rate including the permanent collections
