ARKEN has the great pleasure of presenting 96 works by the French national artist Fernand Léger. The exhibition provides a comprehensive introduction to Léger's art from 1905 to 1954, one year before his death. The focus of the exhibition is on Léger’s delineations of the human form in the first half of the twentieth century.

He was concerned with the role of man in the modern age and fervently committed to building a better society. As an artist he felt morally bound to improve the general conditions of man through his art.

Faith in the future
Therefore Léger's art reflects an optimistic faith in the future. But its themes also number many of the conflicts that have marked modern culture and significantly changed human conditions in the western world.

In 1908, intent on a radical break from the Impressionist style of his early paintings, Léger destroyed the bulk of his works. He wished to be in touch with his time and therefore chose to leave behind his previous style which he found too harmonious.

Instead he developed a much more contrastive idiom that reflected the hectic, dynamic city culture which was forming in the early twentieth century.

Film in Arken's Cinema: Fernand Leger – The subjects of a life

Alain Bergala has written and directed an original film that inquires into Fernand Léger and his subjects. The film paints a many-sided portrait of one of the most important artists of the twentieth century.

Production: Centre Georges Pompidou, Réunion des musées nationaux, Les Films du Tambour de Soie. Danish subtitles.

We kindly ask for your understanding in case the cinema is closed for other events.