"L'echafaudage au soleil"

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(1951)

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"L'echafaudage au soleil" (1951), lithograph, 13 3/8" x 18" (sheet size 20" x 25 7/8") printed in colors on Arches paper, signed in ink by the artist and numbered 74/75, published by Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris, with full margins, in very good condition [Saphire 112].

Fernand Leger (1881-1955) made his first prints in 1920 when he was 39 years old, which was then followed by a flurry of his printmaking in the literary and artistic activity following World War I. But Leger's contract with the dealer and editor Henry Kahnweiler was for his paintings, which was significant to his output of original prints. Leger made only four original prints and illustrated only four books between 1923 and 1947. After Le Vase (1927), the first signed edition print by Leger, there was nothing produced until 1948, when Leger produced the first of 22 color lithographs edited by Kahnweiler's Galerie Louise Leiris in Paris.  The only apparent exception to Leger's preference for Kahnweiler was in the case of three aquatints colored by serigraphy (Saphire #127-129) which Leger paid for himself.

Leger created lithographs at a time when the majority of prints were being done without color; he produced over 30 relatively large lithographs and aquatints in a period when Miro had less than 25 and Picasso, Braque and Chagall far fewer. Leger's lithographs are generally outlined by a line, drawn often quite wide with a brush or pen, and colors are applied flat. His colors, while superficially characterized as primary, actually are quite subtle in hues.  His yellows frequently are deep or mustard as well as pure; his reds vary from the orange to the deep end of the red spectrum; blues frequently have a strong mauve component. Leger's method of coloring was to provide the printer with a marquette,a colored black proof on the lithograph or a gouache of the subject.  The color was usually laid on flat in collaboration between Leger and the printer. Leger nearly always oversaw the quality of the color work set up by the printer. As printmaking seems to have been a rather private after between Leger and his printers, apparently no documentation by Leger exists on the actual making of his prints.

Leger's "L'echafaudage au soleil"" is in a 35 5/8" x 31 1/4" contemporary frame finished in flat black. The wood fillet is gold over a black gild.  The outer black rag, middle reed (mustard yellow) and inner black beveled accent mats are acid and lignin free and are protected with Acrylite-AR OP3 (UV) by CYRO ...... SALE PENDING