I wanted to proclaim a return to simplicity by ways of an immediate art without any subtlety, comprehensible to all. I love Louis David, because he i… - Fernand Léger

The age we live in is largely – and I think mostly – 'objective', but a minority is reacting against this.. .My feeling is that I made colour – the colour plane – 'objective' in 1918, 1920 and 1921. There is a feeling of objectivity in all the great Primitives – but in 'the subject' there is no solution for the object, which has so much intrinsic value that it is 'highly explosive'; it destroys all the things around it, unless they have been designed specifically to serve as a setting for it.

Let us take the time in this fast and ever-changing life which harasses us and tears us to pieces; to have the strength to remain slow and calm. To work outside the elements of disintegration that surrounds us. To comprehend life in it slow and calm sense. The work of art requires a temperate climate in order to develop fully. In this heightened tempo which is the law of life, to determine fixed points to hold onto them and to slowly work on the achievement of the future.

Instead of opposing comic and tragic characters [as Molière and Shakespeare] and contrary scenic states, I organize the opposition of contrasting values, lines, and curves. I oppose curves to straight lines, flat surfaces to molded forms, pure local colors to nuances of gray. These initial plastic forms are either superimposed on objective elements or not, it makes no difference to me. There is only a question of variety.