Fernand Léger was a child of Cubism. He moved to Paris in 1900 and exhibited alongside Metzinger, Gleizes, Le Fauconnier and Delaunay in the early 1910s. The flat, schematic design of the Cubist aesthetic, with simple shapes and little-to-no depth, would remain an enduring characteristic of Léger’s output. His preoccupation with cylindrical shapes earned his art the wry alternative label of ‘Tubism’.

However, while Cubism would form the springboard for many later abstract styles, including Constructivism, Léger’s Cubist eye would in fact reinforce his commitment to figuration, albeit with a distinctively modern flair. He adopted a bright palette of primary-driven colours and, in contrast to the relative distortion adopted by the Cubists, he instead achieved an effect of fragmentary perspectives by intricately overlapping contrasting forms.

Le vase noir dates to 1947 and is a quintessential painting from Léger’s mature production. Spending the years of the French occupation in New York, Léger was inspired by the city lights: "I was struck by the neon advertisements flashing all over Broadway. You are there, you talk to someone, and all of a sudden he turns blue. Then the color fades—another one comes and turns him red or yellow." Léger harnessed the use of colour to convey the vibrancy of modern life. In this, as well as his graphic use of line, Léger was a forerunner of the Pop Artists (cf fig. 1).

After WWII, in 1946, Léger returned to France and began painting works which attest to his profound belief in the capacity for restoration and rejuvenation after the darkest of t.mes s. His chief subjects from this point onwards would be the pursuit of leisure and labour, culminating in his 1950 masterpiece Les constructeurs (Musée National Fernand Léger, Biot, France). The prominent shape of the skittle in Le vase noir references the leisure activities available to a newly-liberated population, while the biomorphic tendrils of a flower symbolically bloom in the foreground; parallels can be found in a number of other late-1940s paintings, which variously depict cards, dominoes and dice within an abstracted landscape. Consolidating key preoccupations from both his pre- and post-war production, Le vase noir exemplifies the renewed passion with which Leger faced his artistic calling, crystallising both aesthetic and social concerns into his magnificent, mature oils.