Three cover designs for 'Cenpa'

Details

Fernand Léger (1881-1955)
Three cover designs for 'Cenpa'
pencil and gouache on paper
each 12 3/8 x 9½in. (31.4 x 24cm.)
Executed circa 1953 (3)

Provenance

Jean Carlu, Paris, by whom acquired from the artist
Alain Weill, Paris, a gift from the above
Anon. sale, Swann Galleries, New York, 11 November 1999, lot 501
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Special notice

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Lot Essay

The first owner of these works was Jean Carlu, editor of the literary review Cenpa. Carlu and Léger met in New York in 1940, where both had fled to escape the war. They became close friends, and when they returned to Paris, Carlu asked Léger to design the cover for an issue of his magazine Cenpa. Léger proposed several designs including the present ones. Carlu gave them as a present to Alain Weill, a curator at the Musée de l'Affiche in Paris.

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