Autumn (from The Four Seasons cycle)

The four seasons are one of the oldest subjects a painter can take, a theme carried through centuries of tapestries and calendars. In 1928 Léger picked it up and rebuilt it out of machine-age parts. His Autumn has no falling leaves and no harvest scene, only flat coloured shapes and rounded forms that seem to float free, without ground or sky. This was the moment he began scattering objects across the surface so they hung in space, a way of working he tied to the cutting and framing he admired in film. The old calendar subject survives only as a title. What fills the canvas is a set of weightless modern shapes arranged for the eye, the same forms he could just as easily have called a still life.