Taking into account his career history on its diversity, this retrospective exhibition in Le Centre Pompidou-MetzFernand Léger. Beauty is all around, sheds new light on the manner in which the artist reinvents painting by drawing on the spectacle of the world and by opening himself up to the other arts. Without ever ceasing to be a painter, Fernand Léger contributes to realms as varied as book illustration, theatre sets, mural painting, experimental cinema and photomontage. It is rare for modern painters to forge links with creators coming from the world of architecture (Le Corbusier, Charlotte Perriand, Paul Nelson...) the cinema (Abel Gance, Marcel L’Herbier, Sergei Eisenstein...) dance (Jean Börlin...) music (Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honnegger...) and poetry (Blaise Cendrars Vladimir Maïakovski...).
Bringing together five decades of creation, the thematic planreflects the living image of painting inventing itself. Nourished by the vitality of his own epoch, work by Léger is destined to escape the confines of the picture frame, to evolve into the screen, onto the stage or onto the walls of the city. Over and above the regeneration of forms, his transdisciplinary approach is tied to his political commitment and linked to his desire to make art part of daily life and to express himself to the greatest number of people.
This monographic exhibition relies on a number of exceptional loans from the Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, completed by major works from large - scale public and private international collections. The display of numerous archival documents allows the presentation of different facets of the man : author of influential texts on painting and on his time, well seasoned traveller, professor in the workshop where hundreds of artists would be trained.