Exit the Ballets Russes

Fernand Léger · 1914

This is Exit the Ballets Russes, painted by Fernand Léger in nineteen fourteen. Léger was drawn to the modern crowd and its noise. The colour arrives in flat, unmodulated blocks — closer to poster printing than to the muted palette of analytic Cubism.

Medium Oil on canvas · Dimensions 53 3/4 x 39 1/2" (136.5 x 100.3 cm) · Credit Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Peter A. Rübel (partly by exchange)

Hanging beside it in Gallery 503: Tarentelle, Still Life with Liqueur Bottle

Works like this one elsewhere in the museum: Portrait of Igor Stravinsky, The Kitchen, Abstract Portrait of Marcel Duchamp, The Spring, The Passage from Virgin to Bride, Synchromy in Blue

More by Fernand Léger here: Bridge, The City, Three Women, Mural Painting, Fragment of a Nut