Presentation of more than 40 paintings which have ‘The Tramp’ as their subject, belonging to a historic collection and until now unpublished. The dossier investigates the, still uncertain, origins of these works and the possible links with Fernand Léger and his studio.

Introduced by Adriano Baccilieri and Cecilia Cenciarelli.

Dossier: Le mystère Léger-Chaplin

The works (46 works on paper and 3 paintings), presented here for the first time, come from a historic collection, today partially split up, gathered in Paris from the 1910s to the 1940s by Carlo Alberto F*, an Italian professor of economy at the Sorbonne who frequented the art-culture circles of the time, not only in France, and was the friend of many artists.
This core is part of a collection of 5000 pieces featuring names of the best avant-garde artists, from Léger to Kupka, from El Lissitzky, Malevič, Larionov to Moholy-Nagy, from Feininger to Arp, the Dutch artists De Stijl, Rietveld, van Doesburg, van der Leck, a few Italians, and even unique figures like Jessurun de Mesquita, or Samuel ‘Mommie’ Levi-Schwarz, both Dutch Jews who ended up as Nazi victims in Auschwitz.
The entire collection has never been seen before in its preserved state from the time of its creation until its relocation to Italy. In fact, with the German occupation of Paris, Carlo Alberto F* returned to Italy before taking up residency in Switzerland in the 1950s. As evidence of their movement and chronology, the back of almost every piece of the collection has a scroll with an information sheet on the work and the stamp ‘Empire Post’, attesting to verification at the border.
The 46 drawings in consideration could be defined as the ‘Léger-Tramp Workshop’ due to the documented reference to the great French artist and his atelier (although in different ways and currently under evaluation) and the use of the Tramp’s image as an iconographic theme, re-interpreted with dazzling and inventive variety (in different ways and by different artists – at least 4 or 5 – also under evaluation).
For the moment, we consider the collection as it is, like an ‘excavation’ that has just begun; not without noting, however, the creative vitality that the works demonstrate and a quality in many of the works that suggests how close the maître of the atelier was to his students.
There is also meaningful annotation: two signed photos for the professor and friend – one of Léger for ‘Charly’, the other of Chaplin for ‘Charly Albert’ – fully attest to their connection. Also one of the paintings features significant writing on the back: “A mon ami Charles Albert avec amitié. Caen 17-3-34. FLéger.”
Among the 46 drawings, there is one in particular that symbolically seals the triangle: the hand of the artist (Léger or an atelier assistant) quickly sketched the actor’s character; the signatures of both appear on the paper, as if Chaplin had endorsed the drawing by (or from) Léger.

Adriano Baccilieri