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Léger, like Picasso, often painted works showing two women together. This theme of a pair of figures had precedents in classical art, and allowed the artist to explore the rhyming shapes and patterns created by the symmetrical image. Here two women are seen with their limbs intertwined, in a state of physical ease and relaxation. One holds a flower, a symbol of natural beauty and fertility. However, this is no rustic idyll. The figures are drawn as outlines upon seemingly casually arranged rectangles of bright colours which give the painting a typically modern sense of energy and dynamism.
August 2004