MASP

From a humble origin, Léger was an apprentice at an architectural firm before studying at the École des Arts Décoratifs and Académie Julian, both in Paris. He participated in the most intense burst of cultural effervescence in Paris’s Montparnasse District, benefiting greatly from rubbing shoulders with artists such as Robert Delaunay (1885-1941) and Marc Chagall (1887-1985), as well as poet Blaise Cendrars (1887-1961), who dedicated his 1919 poem Construction to him. Léger’s cubism was marked by strong lines that delineate the objects, filled by monochromatic areas and shadowing that lends them volume. These principles were set forth in his texts, which include L’esthétique de la machine [The Aesthetics of the Machine] (1923). Besides his forays into theater, in 1924 Léger produced Ballet mécanique [Mechanical Ballet], the first abstract film in the history of cinema, directed in partnership with Dudley Murphy (1897-1968), with the collaboration of Man Ray (1890-1976). Bowl with Pears (1923), a work in MASP’s collection, dialogues with his experiments in these artistic languages, imparting a dynamic, geometric treatment to commonplace themes, blending industrial aesthetics and colors with daily life. The thick outlines and the areas of uniform and shadowed colors recognizably influenced the work of Brazilian painter Tarsila do Amaral (1886‑‑1973), his student in Paris during the 1920s.

— MASP Curatorial Team, 2017

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By Luciano Migliaccio and Luiz Marques
The label on the back of the painting Bowl with Pears refers to the inventory of the Léonce Rosenberg Gallery, where the work was catalogued: “7959, March 1923, 3/20/23, Léger, Le Compotier aux Poires, 81 x 100 ph. n. 471, 1500 f.”. The inventory mentions another slightly larger painting (116 x 81 cm.) with the same title, today kept at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Villeneuve-d’Ascq in northern France. There is still another variant (65 x 50 cm.) mentioned by Bauquier, under n. 351, in his Catalogue raisonné on the Léger oeuvre. The year 1923 was important for Léger because in addition to his participation together with the Hungarian sculptor, Csaky, at the Salon des Indépendants, the artist also wrote a notable article: The Aesthetics of the Machine, dedicated to the Russian poet, Mayakovski, published in the magazine Querschnitt in Berlin, and afterwards, in January 1924 in the Bulletin de L’Effort Moderne. He drew the scenery and costumes for La Création du Monde by Blaise Cendrars, with music composed by Darius Milhaud; he also created the scenery for the engineer’s laboratory in Marcel L’Herbier’s film L’inhumaine. Léger, who had already discovered the aesthetic possibilities of machinery during the war, became interested in movies, making use of the poetry of fragmented objects, studying them in several still lifes in the 1922-1923 period and then making the film Ballet Mécanique in 1924. The objects took on monumental dimensions and lent dynamism to the images, with a rhythm created by colored geometric shapes (Andral 1998). The Masp canvas was part of the collection of Olívia Guedes Penteado, a patron of Modernism in São Paulo, who should be remembered together with Paulo Prado, as the sponsor of the Week of Modern Art in 1922. Olívia Guedes Penteado acquired the picture in Paris in 1923, perhaps according to the orientation of her friend and poet, Blaise Cendrars – who visited Brazil several times between 1924 and 1934, establishing relations with the Modernists. The purchase may also have been due to the advice of the painter Tarsila do Amaral, a great admirer of Léger’s works. According to Aguilar (1991, p. 89) “the way of creating depth without leaving the plane in implicit in the 1912 Contrast of Forms, which made such an impression on the cubist-futurist Malévitch”.

— Luciano Migliaccio and Luiz Marques, 1998

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