The Three Musicians

Fernand Léger

1944 (after a drawing of 1924-25; dated on painting 1924-44)

An oil on canvas in which Léger renders three musicians as bold, machine-like figures to celebrate rhythm, modernity, and the communal energy of performance.

You’re struck by the flat, graphic shapes and thick black outlines—faces reduced to simple planes and the accordion’s striped bellows set against a vivid yellow ground so the whole scene reads like a rhythmic, mechanical tableau.

The work translates Cubist simplification into a populist, industrial aesthetic—Léger’s ‘tubist’ vocabulary—which helped move avant‑garde abstraction into the visual language of mid‑20th‑century design and figurative painting.

Palette

Art Terms

Cubism Modern art Avant-garde Oil paint Canvas Figurative Industrialization Classicism

Exhibitions

Fernand Léger: Paintings and Drawings

1935

Painting in Paris

1930

Abstract Painting; Shapes of Things

1941

Fernand Léger in the Museum Collection

1960