The J. Paul Getty Museum

Object Description

This colorful, towering flower seems to walk toward us with outstretched arms. A pair of "legs"--one orange, one black--extend from a central blue and white "body." The orange right leg takes a deliberate step forward as if to stabilize the form. Four additional elements radiate from the center. At the top of the sculpture, the white and orange petal serves as the flower's "head." Three extended "arms" in green, red, and white flank the head.

Fernand Léger began creating glazed ceramics around 1950. These works were almost immediately celebrated for their adventurous use of pure, saturated color which was unusual for sculpture. Léger developed the animated flower subject in his paintings of the 1930s and returned to the motif on many occasions. For Léger, the forms of nature were an antidote to the pressures of an increasingly fast-paced and mechanized world.