Fernand Leger Artwork Details

 

 

Detailed Description

Edition: 3000 (Most of these were destroyed/severely damaged at the time of manufacture and distribution. Printed by : Baynard Press Reference: SP25 Fernand Leger, Loeuvre Grave - by Lawrence Saphire (Caatalogue Raisonee) number 41 Condition: Generally in good condition. Note: School Prints, published in the 1940s, are now recognised as a high water mark of the post-war artistic exuberance and optimism that culminated in the Festival of Britain. Now fifty years on, it is remarkable to find surviving original stock of these splendid prints. The idea behind School Prints Ltd was brilliant and simple. Commission good artists to create original lithographs which would be editioned in very large numbers and sold cheaply to those schools adventurous enough to subscribe to the scheme. Thus, would it be possible for children in school to enjoy a direct and continuous contact with real works of art. In her introductory letter to artists, Brenda Rawnsley, whose idea it was, wrote 'We are producing a series of auto-lithographs, four for each term, for use in schools, as a means of giving school children an understanding of contemporary art'. If that somewhat ambitious aim were not to be fulfilled, the prints would in any case enliven corridor walls and bring a splash of welcome colour into dull assembly halls. The book by Saphire (see above) elaborates on the theme of this work. Leger had used a motif of a Playing Card showing a King for the first time in 1926/7 in a painting entitled “Composition”. Saphire illustrates (see page 271) an affidavit signed by Brenda Rawnsley and Raglan Squire (organisers of the Schoolprints project) to the effect that this was and original lithograph and the project was planned in the artists studio in Clichy, Paris on Tuesday 22nd June, 1948