The City

Fernand Léger painted The City after returning to Paris from military service in the First World War. He believed that modern painting should respond to a world he saw as fast-changing and unsentimental. The Philadelphia Museum of Art identifies this immense work as the culmination of a series on the same subject made after the war. In the years that followed, Léger made cities, machines, and everyday objects central subjects in his work. He had developed a personal approach to Cubism, a style that breaks forms into simplified parts, after earlier training and study in Paris. The Fernand Léger National Museum explains that he used contrasts of form and color to convey the energy of his own time. The painting remains a key postwar statement of Léger's ambition to make art equal to the scale and pace of modern life.