Photo By Gail

The paintings of Fernand Leger (1881 – 1955) often celebrate machine-made objects and modern city life. However,  in the late 1920s, he began to include natural forms in his work. The curving line down the left-hand side of his 1927 painting Leaves and Shell softens the underlying geometric structure of horizontal and vertical lines. It also acts as a link to the organic shapes of leaves and a shell. These naturalistic elements, with their streamlined shapes, are closely connected to the abstract parts of the image.

Photographed in the Tate Modern Museum in London.