Leger’s style is unmistakable and memorable. Partie de Campagne, a series variously translated as The Picnic or The Country Outing, is a series of variations, and part of a project he called the Great Parade. As lithographs, these were among Léger s most famous works.
Partie de Campagne. oil on canvas.1953
Léger’s picnickers are interested in food. In the oil paintings, the group is gathered at the shoreline of an unidentified body of water but not in the lithographs. The central figure of a reclining woman wears a swimsuit that is sometimes colored blue or sometimes red. Sitting beside her is a man’s semi-informal clothing, suit jacket, shirt and tie, and hat. An automobile in the background always requires repairs, but no one seems concerned.
Featured Image: Partie de Campagne aka The Country Outing (1952), color lithograph