Back cover from La Fin du monde filmée par l'ange de N.-D. (The End of the World Filmed by the Angel of Notre Dame)

Back cover from La Fin du monde filmée par l'ange de N.-D. (The End of the World Filmed by the Angel of Notre Dame) is a significant graphic work created by Fernand Léger in 1919. This piece functions as the concluding design for the French Illustrated Book, a landmark publication of the immediate post-World War I era. The work’s medium is a line block, one of the two such blocks used exclusively for the front and back covers, distinguishing it from the internal sequence of twenty-two plates which utilized pochoir (stencil) techniques, often combined with a line block.

This line block design exemplifies the aesthetic shift Léger explored following the war, moving toward a mechanized interpretation of Cubism characterized by bold, thick contours and geometric simplification. The composition for the back cover retains the architectonic structure and emphasis on dynamic equilibrium found in his painting of the period, though rendered purely in high-contrast linear terms. The artist, Léger, employed this simplified graphic language to reflect the new industrial and technological realities permeating the culture of 1919.

As a component of this important Illustrated Book, the design offers crucial insight into Léger’s experimentation with reproducible media and his collaborative relationship with avant-garde writers. This specific back cover artifact, classified as a print component, is held in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Through institutional holdings such as this, crucial documentation of early 20th-century French printmaking and design is preserved for public access and scholarly review.