Tous Léger!

Fernand Léger, the French artist known for his eccentric, riotously colourful paintings that drew on modernist schools such as cubism and Surrealism, exerted an outsize and wide-ranging influence on the work of his immediate successors. That is the central thesis of this exhibition at the Musée du Luxembourg, which displays Léger’s work alongside pieces by 20th- and 21st-century artists (19 March–20 July). Léger’s La danseuse bleue (1930) is hung alongside Yves Klein’s Blue Venus from the 1960s, for instance; a coloured terracotta flower made by Léger in 1954 is juxtaposed with Gilbert & George’s mixed-media Flower Worship (1982). Niki de Saint Phalle features particularly strongly in the show, which draws parallels between the two artists’ cacophonous use of colour and the almost child-like dream worlds they both created in their work. The exhibition was first shown at the Musée National Fernand Léger in Biot in the south-east of France and is making its second stop at the Musée du Luxembourg.

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Find out more from the Musée du Luxembourg’s website

Four Cyclists (1943–48), Fernand Léger. Musée National Fernand Léger, Biot. Photo: Gérard Blot; © GrandPalaisRmn/Adagp, Paris, 2025

Nana Health (1999), Niki de Saint Phalle. Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain, Nice. Photo: Muriel Anssens; © Ville de Nice/2025 Niki Charitable Art Foundation/Adagp, Paris

Project for a painted mural, ‘Vulcania’ (1951), Fernand Léger. Musée National Fernand Léger, Biot. Photo: Gérard Blot; © GrandPalaisRmn/Adagp, Paris, 2025

Blue Venus (Venus of Alexandria) (c.1962), Yves Klein. Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain, Nice. Photo: Jean-Christophe Lett; © Ville de Nice/Succession Yves Klein/ADAGP Paris, 2025