We are live blogging this morning from the magnificent grand hall of the Philadelphia Museum of Art where will will enjoy a preview of the big, new exhibition Leger, Modern Art and the Metropolis.
This exhibition opens on October 14 and will run through January 5. It's a multimedia presentation comprising 179 works including loans from public and private collections in Europe and the United States.
This exhibition unites The City, a major work of French painter Fernand Leger (1881 - 1955) with other important painting from this momentous period.
When he returned to Paris after military service in World War I, Leger encountered a changed city, infused with a new, boisterous energy that would inspire him to create one of his landmark achievements, the monumental painting The City. This masterpiece marked the creation of a of the most experimental period in Leger's artistic life and it continued into the 1920s when Leger began to actively engage the the urban popular and commercial arts.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art is the only place in the United States where you can see this exhibition. If you don't see it here, you will have to travel to Venice to see it.
Leger was a master at conveying the density and the spatial complexity of urban life. Through his art, he helped to define the 20th century -- a time of incredible growth and the emergence of the mass media and mass marketing. Leger believed he spoke to a mass audience, both mirroring and commenting on all that was around him. Naturally, his work reflects on the role of humans and the growing sense of alienation that came along with urban life in the new century.
This is an exhibition that you will not want to miss.
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