Composition au Tournesol, 1953 by Fernand Léger

Provenance:
Jacob Goldschmidt, New York
By descent to a Private Collection, France
Sotheby's, auction, Olympia, 23 October 2002, lot 694
Private Collection
Sotheby's, auction, New York, 15 February 2007, lot 111
Estate of Robert Noakes

During the Second World War, the French artist Fernand Léger was in exile in the United States, where he became a teacher at Yale University and at Mills College in Oakland. He would only return to France in December 1945, drawing inspiration from geometric abstraction to combine figuration and abstraction in his own works.

Sunflowers would become an enduring theme for Léger, who dedicated his Tournesols series to his second wife, Nadia Khodossievitch-Léger. Of Russian origin, Nadia loved nibbling on sunflower seeds, leading her to plant the flowers in their garden. But Léger thought otherwise. Treating their garden as an outdoor exhibition space for some of his monumental works, he requested the gardener to remove all the flowers without consulting Nadia first. This series was initially developed by a remorseful artist seeking forgiveness from his wife. This work pays homage to this series, depicting a vibrant sunflower in golden yellow tones with drooping leaves in shades of green, blue, and yellow. The flower is surrounded by what appears to be machine-made parts, drawing the viewer’s eye upward and testifying to Léger’s enduring fascination with modern life and transcending the limitations of two-dimensional representations.

We are grateful to the Comité Léger for confirming the authenticity of this work.