(Argentan 1881–1955 Gif-sur-Yvette) Les deux mannequins, c. 1938 monogrammed F. L., gouache on paper, 47 x 32.7 cm, with dedication ‘à Mme Koenigsbergen souvenir de l’éxposition de Leverkusen - N. Léger’, framed, (PS)

Photo certificate: Irus Hansma, 4.1.2013
This work will be included in the Répertoire des oeuvres sur papier de Fernand Léger by Irus Hansma, which is currently in preparation.

Provenance: Koenigsberg Collection, Leverkusen
Galerie d’Art Graven, Paris 1958
Hillmann Family Collection, New York
Private Collection, New York

Literature: Braun, Emily, Manet to Matisse, The Hillman Family Collection, New York, 1994, p. 96, full-page ill. p. 97 (the catalogue of the Hillman Family Collection is included.)

Exhibition: Fernand Léger, Städtisches Museum Leverkusen, Februay 1955 “The Two Mannequins is typical of a number of Léger’s gouaches from the late thirties, which served as exercises in the conception of large-scale compositions and mural painting. The drawing combines Léger’s penchant for geometric reduction with his free-floating objects and organic, biomorphic style of the previous decade. Two highly schematized human forms - one frontal, the other in profile - stand against a unified field deep red. The forms are divided into a series of multicolored geometric areas and circumscribed with dark black lines, which have the effect of carving the figures in stark relief, like slabs of stone or wood. The colors and delineated outlines advance and recede, creating a visual mobility out of purely pictorial means, congenial to the flat plane of the wall. (...) The inscription in the lower right, by Nadja Léger (née Khodossjevitch), the artist’s longtime assistant and second wife whom he married in 1952, reads: ‘To Madame Koenigsberg, a souvenir of the Leverkusen exhibition’. Though the recipient remains unknown, the exhibition referred to is Léger’s own, held in the German city in 1955, the year of his death.”
(Braun, The Hillman Family Collection, p. 96.)