Fernand LÉGER (1881-1955) - Lot 79

Fernand LÉGER (1881-1955) Mask ca. 1923 (costume project for La Création du Monde) Watercolor, brush and ink over pencil drawing on paper Signed with initials lower right 27 x 21 cm Provenance - Nadia Léger, wife of the artist - Pierre Cardin (acquired from previous owner). - Sale of Léger's costume designs from the Pierre Cardin Collection, Sotheby's - London, Oct 21 1998, no. 202 - Private collection, Paris, acquired from the latter Exhibition: 1970, Paris, inauguration of Espace Pierre Cardin, 1 avenue Gabriel, Paris. For almost 40 years, fashion designer and cultural producer Pierre Cardin has worked to make the Espace Pierre Cardin, inaugurated in 1971, a meeting and exhibition place for renowned and emerging artists. Over the years, he has developed a wide range of cultural activities in theater, dance, music and the visual arts. Rolf de Maré's Ballets Suédois, with Jean Börlin as star dancer, set up shop at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in the early 20s as the main competitor to Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. They called on avant-garde artists for sets and costumes, thus participating, in this period of intense artistic creativity, in the fruitful collaboration of the different forms of expression of modernity. Conceived to be "the only Negro ballet possible in the whole world, and the one that will remain as the type of the genre" (letter from Fernand Léger to Rolf de Maré, 12sept 1922), La Création du Monde is exemplary for its references to primitive and African art in particular, to which many avant-garde artists have been interested since 1905, such as Derain and Picasso, and which nourished Cubism and all of Modern Art. With a script by Blaise Cendrars, music by Darius Milhaud, choreography by Rolf de Maré, costumes and sets by Fernand Léger, La Création du Monde was presented on October 25, 1923. Its African sources and Léger's art make it a milestone in the Cubist epic. Léger's models and projects were divided between Dansmuseet, Stockholm, and the Cardin Collection. Notice of inclusion in the committee's catalogue dated March 27, 2025