Houses under the Trees

1913

On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 830

Léger was intrigued by the contrast between the billowing forms of the trees that frame this composition and the central rectangular buildings painted blue, white, and red—the colors of the French flag. Léger developed a language of basic geometric shapes, which signify different objects depending on their context. Here, the buoyant semicircles represent foliage, whereas elsewhere they become the anatomical curves of a nude figure or ethereal puffs of smoke rising in an urban landscape.