Composition with Red Head (Still Life with Serpent; the Red Figure)

By 1927 the hard geometry was loosening. Léger began letting his shapes drift free of any table or floor, and curves crept back in among the straight edges. This still life is built around a red profile head and a coiled snake, both treated as just more objects afloat on a neutral ground, weightless and equal. The serpent winds through the composition like a length of hose, no more alive or dangerous than the flat plates and bands around it. He was moving toward what he would call objects in space, pictures where things hang without support and radiate out from the surface. The red head holds the eye at the centre while everything else seems to hover a little in front of the canvas.