The Builders by Leger in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, January 2019

The Builders
1920

Object Details

Title: The Builders

Artist: Fernand Léger (French, Argentan 1881–1955 Gif-sur-Yvette)

Date: 1920

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 25 3/8 x 36 1/4 in. (64.5 x 92.1 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection, Gift of Muriel Kallis Newman, 2006

Accession Number: 2006.32.36


The quintessential painter of the machine age, Léger observed the effects of modern technology in the trenches as a solider in the French army during World War I. Featuring workers whose bodies appear to be assembled from standardized industrial parts, The Builders exemplifies the style that Léger developed after the war to convey his belief that all of modern life was succumbing to the machine. He wrote in a letter in 1922, "The contemporary environment is clearly the manufactured and ‘mechanical’ object; this is slowly subjugating the breasts and curves of women, fruit, the soft landscape."


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/490201