Fernand Léger

Kaktus (Cactus, ca. 1954–55)

Photo: N. Lackner / UMJ, ©️ Bildrecht, Vienna 2024

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When it comes to architecture, and perhaps not only here, the city of Graz has a history of missing the adventure of modernism (and jumping right into postmodernism). There is a city legend that, after World War II and the withdrawal of the occupying forces, the newly rebuilt central station was to boast a mural commissioned to the French avant-garde artist Fernand Léger (1881, Argentan, French Third Republic–1955, Gif-sur-Yvette, France). Rumor has it that his communist sympathies precluded this. Neither the city’s nor Léger’s archives contain any sketches or plans for such a mural. Art historian and Neue Galerie director Wilfried Skreiner (1927–1994) would tell this story to his students to create a context of defiance, where not only modernism but also modernity appeared as a potentiality, still waiting to be realized.

Screen print, 37.7 × 56 cm

Neue Galerie Graz / Universalmuseum Joanneum

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