Les fumeurs

If you examine this gouache from Fernand Léger’s early period carefully, you will see that the composition includes two people smoking and apparently dissolving into the smoke of their cigars that mingles with the smoke from the chimneys. The work also alludes to the backdrop of the city, which is rendered in geometric shapes. Léger often spoke about contrasts of forms, or ‘contrastes des formes’. Here, this is clearly demonstrated by the contrast between static and dynamic forms, and the interaction between light and dark colors. Guillaume Apollinaire, a leading art critic of the day, called Léger ‘one of the most interesting cubists, because instead of imitating he carved out his own road’. This work was originally owned by the art collector P.A. Regnault, who gifted it to the Stedelijk shortly after its purchase in 1931.