During the Second World War, Fernand Léger moved to the US to teach at Yale, and it was during this period that he had a conceptual breakthrough in his work after seeing industrial refuse in the natural landscape. The shock of juxtaposed natural forms and mechanical elements exemplified the artist’s ‘law of contrasts’: his basic principle for structuring modern pictures but also his way of describing the dynamism of modern life. In this work, painted after Léger had returned to France, bold primary colours, tubular forms and strong black outlines work together to describe a combine harvester.
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