Fernand Léger (February 4, 1881 - August 17, 1955) was a leading French Cubist painter of the first half of the 20th century.
Born in Argentan, Normandy, into a peasant family, his father was orphaned before he was two years old.
Between 1897 and 1899 he was a student of an architect in Caen;
His first works date from 1905 and are clearly influenced by Impressionism.
In 1907, like other Parisian painters, he was deeply impressed by the Cézanne retrospective.
From the first moments, Léger's cubism was oriented towards the development of the iconography of the machine.
In the last ten years of his life, he made book illustrations, paintings of monumental figures, mural paintings, stained glass windows, mosaics, polychrome ceramic sculptures and theater sets.
He died on August 17 of that same year in Gif-sur-Yvette, France.