The artwork titled “Houses in the trees landscape n°3” was created by the artist Fernand Léger in the year 1914. Embodied within the Cubist art movement, it adopts the genre of cityscape, offering a distinct interpretation of urban forms and spaces through the lens of Cubist fragmentation and abstraction.
The artwork displays a complex network of geometric shapes and fragmented forms that collectively suggest the motif of a cityscape integrated with nature. We observe a multiplicity of sharply angled triangles, circles, cylinders, and rectangles that converge and overlap, evoking the notion of houses nestled amongst trees. The fragmentation typical of Cubism is evident, with the traditional perspective forsaken in favor of representing objects and space from multiple viewpoints simultaneously.
Léger’s palette comprises primary colors—reds, blues, and yellows—juxtaposed with the earthy tones of the background and the neutral whites, blacks, and grays that compose the forms. This juxtaposition creates a dynamic interplay of color and form, with the warmer hues possibly representing the vitality of urban life and the cooler ones leading to a sense of depth and volumetric variation. The boundaries between the ‘houses’ and the ‘trees’ are blurred, fostering an integrated landscape where the natural and built environments are inseparable.
Smooth gradients of color suggest a roundness to certain forms, indicating cylindrical shapes that might represent tree trunks or architectural columns, while the sharper geometries hint at the angularity of man-made structures. Overall, “Houses in the trees landscape n°3” reflects Léger’s modernist sensibility, which dismantled and reassembled the visual experience of city life into a canvas that challenges the viewer’s perception and invites a deeper contemplation of the relationship between nature and urbanity.
