Fernand Léger's 'La Grande Parade' (1954) is the 3 × 4 metre culmination of his late career, painted the year before his death. Clowns, musicians, and acrobats from the circus are built of heavy black contours and flat fields of primary red, blue, and yellow, stacked into a monumental wall-sized composition that elevates industrial-age popular culture to the dignity of a classical mural. It is the single largest and most iconic canvas in the Musée national Fernand Léger in Biot, on the French Riviera, and the definitive statement of his lifelong project to fuse modern painting with popular spectacle.

Exhibition Venue

Fernand Léger National Museum

Biot, France