I n the late 1940s, Léger began developing his signature Constructeurs theme, which culminated in in 1950 with the monumental oil Les Constructeurs now in the Musée national Fernand Léger in Biot. In the present work, La Roue de l'échelle, we see key elements from Les Constructeurs taking form. The work was painted in 1947 in Paris, most likely in Léger’s studio at 86, Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs.

The Constructeurs series was Léger's ode to the working class of France as the country, and the world at large, worked to rebuild its industry after World War II. Léger sought to connect with and represent the working middle class. Part of Léger’s inspiration for this theme came as Leger passed a factory that was under construction in the fields near Chevreuse, outside Paris.

In the case of La Roue de l'échelle, this contrast is found in the rigid geometry of industrial shapes such as the ladder and wheel, positioned alongside the sinuous organic forms, of the clouds and plants. Leger celebrates symbols of technology and industry intertwined with nature.

La Roue de l'échelle exemplifies Léger's commitment to the theme of construction work and his fascination with expressive color – two of the most defining factors of his work during the last decade of his life. Léger renders the painting's elements with a sharp claritys , full saturation, and bold black outlines, the signature stylistic practices of his late work.

Léger’s paintings from the 1940s and 1950s would have a profound effect on color-field and Pop Art painting in the later twentieth century. Artists such as Frank Stella and Roy Lichtenstein would incorporate elements of Léger’s work into their canvases. Art historian and curator Philippe Büttner writes, "Léger's presence in Lichtenstein's oeuvre is indeed more than obvious. Again and again he gives places of prominence to quotations of Léger's motifs” (quoted in Fernand Léger, Paris—New York (exhibition catalogue), Fondation Beyeler, Basel, 2008, p. 21). In Preparedness, now in the collects ion of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, one can see the influence of Leger’s industrial theme – an emphasis on wheels or gears, beams that resemble ladders, and even the smoke from the factory calls back to Leger’s clouds.