Les belles cyclistes (The Women Cyclists)

Fernand Léger

1944

On View in Gertrude Bernoudy Gallery, Room 4

The French artist Fernand Leger painted this scene of women cyclists while in exile in New York City during World War II. Four muscular women dressed in shorts and T-shirts rest during a bicycle outing. They stand or sit together with their arms on one another's shoulders, their abstracted and disjointed bodies intertwined with their bicycles. This is one of many works in which Leger depicted everyday leisure and sporting activities, elevating popular culture to the subject matter of art. Free-floating bands of primary color crisscross the painting, highlighting and fragmenting the figures and investing the fixed composition with a dynamic sense of movement. These brightly colored bands recall the dazzling spotlights and advertising signs of the city, suggesting the transformative mental and physical effects of color encountered in everyday life. [Permanent collection label, 2019]

Artist Fernand Léger (French, 1881–1955)
Title Les belles cyclistes (The Women Cyclists)
Date 1944
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions unframed | 29 x 36 in.
Credit line Gift of Charles H. Yalem, 1963
Object number WU 4185

Technique oil painting
Work type painting
Theme Exile, Migration, and Displacement

Currently on View Gertrude Bernoudy Gallery, Room 4

Artists in Exile: European Surrealists in the US during and after World War II
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 09/01/2023

Red
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 09/20/2013 - 01/06/2014

Face and Figure in European Art, 1928–1945
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/25/2013 - 04/21/2013

Caught By Politics: Art of the 1930s and 1940s
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/19/2001 - 03/18/2001

Affinity of Form: African and Modern European Art
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 08/27/1999 - 10/24/1999

Cubism and Abstraction
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/12/1998 - 04/05/1998

Abstract Expressionism: American Art in the 1950s and 1960s
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/17/1997 - 04/06/1997

Fernand Leger
Dallas Museum of Art, 05/12/1982 - 06/27/1982
Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, 03/11/1982 - 04/18/1982
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, 01/15/1982 - 02/28/1982

The Centennial Exhibition
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 05/15/1981 - 10/11/1981

Cubist, Expressionist, and Surrealist Paintings and Sculptures

Fernand Léger
Art Gallery of South Australia (Adelaide, South Australia), 03/01/1976 - 04/01/1976

Fernand Léger
Fernand Léger [additions to display at WUGA + local loans], Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/15/1967 - 02/10/1967

Washington University Collection of Modern Paintings and Sculpture from Daumier to Pollock
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 04/06/1966 - 05/08/1966

Salute to St. Louis
Stix, Baer & Fuller Department Store, 10/04/1965 - 10/16/1965

A Little Léger Retrospective
Saidenberg Gallery (New York, New York), 10/01/1953 - 11/18/1953

Fernand Léger: Exposition rétrospective
Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, 10/06/1949 - 11/13/1949

1963
Charles H. Yalem, St. Louis

Inscription [LR:] F. Leger '44

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