On December 31, 2025, the works of Fernand Léger (1881-1955), one of the undisputed masters of Cubism and a pioneer of industrial aesthetics, will enter the public domain in many countries according to the copyright legislations. Thanks to official agreements with some of the most prestigious international museums, that among the many works also house the French artist’s masterpieces, Scala continues to guarantee the highest quality reproductions, faithful to the original colors and pictorial details that characterize Léger’s art. This commitment goes beyond simple documentation—it’s about preserving the respect owed to the work and vision of one of the great masters of the twentieth century.
Fernand Léger captured the spirit of the twentieth century, transforming the Cubist language into a celebration of industrial civilization. His works represent a bridge between artistic avant-garde and modern reality, where machines, workers, and urban landscapes become protagonists of a new monumental aesthetic. From his early Cubist experiments of the 1910s, through the “mechanical” period of the 1920s, to his final synthesis between figurative and abstract art, Léger constantly reinvented his visual language while always maintaining extraordinary poetic coherence.
Color in Léger is never merely decorative: vibrant reds, deep blues, and solar yellows construct space and define volumes with an architectural logic that anticipates many subsequent artistic endeavors. Each tone serves a precise function in the compositional economy of the painting.
Contrast of Forms from 1913, housed at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, represents one of the most radical and experimental moments in Fernand Léger’s artistic production, the height of his most advanced Cubist period. Léger employs a reduced palette of primary and complementary colors, organizing the composition through chromatic tension that accentuates formal contrast. Space is no longer illusionistic but constructed through the superimposition and intersection of colored planes. The work testifies to the search for a modern artistic language capable of expressing the energy and dynamism of the contemporary world through pure formal construction, anticipating the democratic conception of art that would characterize the artist’s maturity.
Léger was among the first artists to recognize the aesthetic potential of industrial civilization. In his canvases, gears, pistons, and metallic structures acquire an artistic dignity equal to that of human figures, creating compositions of extraordinary visual power. This prophetic vision of industrial art made him a precursor to contemporary aesthetics.
The Tugboat from 1922, housed in the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, represents a crucial moment in Fernand Léger’s artistic evolution: the artist transforms an everyday industrial object—the tugboat—into an artistic subject worthy of representation. Moreover, this gouache, part of a larger series, marks a departure from the geometric abstract compositions of previous years toward a more direct representation of the modern industrialized world.
Léger’s characters are emblems of modernity: monumental workers, geometric figures, that embody the strength and dignity of industrial labor. Through simplified forms and primary colors, the artist celebrates the humanity of the machine and the mechanicity of man, creating a unique dialogue between nature and technology. Faith in man, faith in the machine, faith in art’s civilizing mission.
Three Women (Le Grand Déjeuner) from 1921-22, part of MoMA’s collection in New York, is emblematic of the European’s post-war art world “return to order” but is also a “humanistic” work: an ideal and symbolic image of peace, harmony, and universal beauty, capable of expressing the artist’s hopes for humanity’s improvement.
The artist developed a particular fascination with the circus world, which became one of the most recurring iconographic themes in his artistic production of the 1940s and 1950s. The circus represented the perfect embodyment of modernity: a mechanized spectacle where acrobats, clowns, and animals moved with the precision of gears in a perfect machine.
Les Loisirs – Hommage à Louis David (1948-49), housed at the Musée National d’Art Moderne of the Centre Pompidou, celebrates among other things a fundamental social conquest of the French working class, elevating the leisure time of the popular masses to a subject worthy of monumental artistic representation.
Léger dreamed of a total art that could integrate into daily life. From murals to theatrical stage design, from advertising graphics to architectural projects, his research extended to all fields of visual expression, prefiguring the contemporary concept of integrated design.
Study for Cinematic Mural, Study V (1938-39), housed at MoMA in New York, represents one of Fernand Léger’s most visionary and innovative projects, testimony of his pioneering interest in new media and its integration into art. The work is part of a series of preparatory studies for a cinematic mural probably destined for the 1939 New York World’s Fair and demonstrates the artist’s visionary capacity to imagine new artistic forms suited to modern society, confirming his position as an artist-innovator always attentive to the transformations of his time.
Fernand Léger was not just an artist, he was a true visionary who managed to anticipate many of the central issues of contemporary art. His democratic concept of art—art as an instrument of social transformation—, his faith in technological progress, and his ability to find beauty in industrial modernity make him an indispensable reference figure for understanding the roots of contemporary visual culture.
As the end of 2025 approaches, Scala Archives prepares to celebrate this important historical passage by making available to scholars and art enthusiasts its images relating to Fernand Léger’s entire oeuvre. This represents a precious contribution to keeping alive the memory of one of the great masters of modern art, fostering the diffusion of his artistic legacy, and documenting the artist’s entire creative trajectory through the highest quality images.
The photographic campaigns carried out at major international museums—from the Centre Pompidou in Paris to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, from Tate Modern in London to the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid—allow us to appreciate the details of the original works.
For any further information about available licenses and in-depth iconographic research regarding this and other artists who will enter the public domain starting January 1, 2026, consult the dedicated page on our website (LINK) and don’t hesitate to contact us.
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In the cover: Fernand Léger, The City, 1919. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, USA – A183610
