Le cycliste (1951)

Léger, Fernand (1881-1955)

Le cycliste (The Bicyclist)
1951
Oil on canvas, 130.8 x 97.8 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Straddling a bicycle, a sturdy woman stands still. One foot rests on the right pedal, the other on the ground. On the bicycle’s back sits her child, a young boy. Their colorful leotards identify the pair as circus performers. Beginning in the late 1930s, Léger’s paintings became animated by merry workers and construction crews as well as sportsmen: acrobats, swimmers, gymnasts, and bicyclists. Here, he reprised the motif— mother and child with bicycle—from the right-hand side of his earlier large horizontal painting Leisure Time: Homage to Louis David (194849; Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris). (MET)