Woman at the Mirror from Das Kunstblatt, IV annual

Woman at the Mirror from Das Kunstblatt, IV annual is a significant graphic work created by Fernand Léger in 1920. This piece is a lithograph, demonstrating the artist's sophisticated engagement with printmaking techniques during a pivotal period in French modernism. Commissioned for the prestigious German art journal Das Kunstblatt, this image exemplifies Léger's post-World War I shift toward classicism, highly structured forms, and the exploration of the figure.

The year 1920 marks a critical turning point in Léger’s career, where the dynamic fragmentation and rapid movement characteristic of earlier Cubism were replaced by a renewed emphasis on order, clarity, and monumentality. This aesthetic commitment, often termed the Machine Aesthetic or Purism, prioritized geometric precision and a return to stable, recognizable figuration. In Woman at the Mirror, Léger translates the human form and its environment into simplified, volumetric shapes, balancing the modernity of the composition with a classical stability inherent in French artistic traditions. The print’s stark contrasts, achieved through the lithographic process, and its precise outlines reflect the broader European reaction against wartime chaos and a subsequent return to rigor in draftsmanship.

Léger uses the subject of a woman confronting her reflection to explore the relationship between solid form and depicted space, a theme frequently examined by modern masters. The composition emphasizes the mechanical clarity of the subject, transforming the intimate act of gazing into a mirror into a controlled study of cylinders, cones, and planes.

As a lithograph, this piece was intended for wider distribution, making it an essential example of how early 20th-century artists utilized fine art prints to disseminate their intellectual and aesthetic ideas beyond the exclusive walls of Parisian galleries. Today, the work is held in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Access to high-resolution images of important 1920 prints such as this one is often facilitated through public domain initiatives by major institutions, allowing for continued study and appreciation of this foundational work.