Fernand Léger was a French painter who made a unique contribution to Cubism. Along with Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, Léger crafted idiosyncratic methods of depicting three-dimensional objects in pictorial space. “I organize the opposition between colors, lines, and curves,” he said of painting. “I set curves against straight lines, patches of color against plastic forms, pure colors against subtly nuanced shades of gray.” Born on February 4, 1881 in Argentan, France, Léger apprenticed with an architect before moving to Paris in 1900, where he worked as an architectural draftsman. While taking courses at the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian, he came...