Fernand Léger (1881-1955)

The present work is a large, fully elaborated gouache maquette for one of the superb mosaics that cover the building of the Léger Museum in Biot.
At the end of his life, Fernand Léger acquired a property near the village of Biot, near the Côte d’Azur. After his death in 1955, his widow Nadia and their close friend Georges Bauquier decided to create a museum on this site that would pay tribute to the artist’s legacy and raise awareness of his œuvre. The building was designed by the architect Andreï Svetchineand and its façade was crowned with a monumental mosaic celebrating sport, that Léger had recently designed for an aborted project to decorate Hannover stadium. In 1968, the museum was donated to the French State, along with several hundred works of the artist; it is now a National Museum.
Maquette pour la façade du Musée Biot was executed in the early 1950s for the Hannover project and shows the first apparition of the iconic motifs that would eventually adorn the museum that bears his name.