LÉGER, Fernand

An early Cubist painter, Léger belongs to avant-garde history first for portraying both machinery and warfare in modern ways. He was also a renowned stage designer whose work is remembered mostly through insufficient photographs, and then a filmmaker whose Ballet mécanique (1924), exploring rhythm and motion, survives as classic avant-garde cinema. During World War II, Léger, very much an ebullient personality, lived in America, collaborating with Hans Richter on part of the latter's...