In 1913, he participates in the Armory Show exhibitions organized by the American Association of Painters and Sculptors, in New York, Chicago, and Boston, and regularly exhibits at the Salon des indépendants.
On May 5th, in Paris, he holds his first lecture at the Académie Vassilieff: The Origin of Painting and its Representative Value, marking the beginnings of his teaching career. In October, he signs an exclusive agreement with Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, then takes over the studio of the painter Henri Le Fauconnier, at 86 rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs in Paris, where he will stay until his deathhis death.
This period was often compared to Marinetti’s futurism. Indeed, Léger was interested in translating the modern world in his paintings, with his research on dynamic effects. Whereas he is fascinated with the acceleration modern life is experiencing, his formal research lacks the political dimension of the futurists, who are anarchists.
Fernand Léger seeks with his contrasts of shapes and colors to establish formal oppositions between lines, surfaces, and colors. He creates for the viewer a dynamic effect, as close as possible to the feelings that modern life elicits in him.
May 9, 1914, second conference at the Vassilieff Academy: “ Les réalisations picturales actuelles”. He became friends with Michel Larionov and Natalia Goncharova.