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Lot Essay
The authenticity of this work has been kindly confirmed by the Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris, and is registered in their archives under number FLC 334.
Although Le Corbusier is universally reknown for his architectural achievements, painting was equally important to him. Inspiration for many of his buildings has its root in his paintings, drawings and writings and vice versa. The two disciplines of painting and architecture were symbiotic for him. He said of painting: "I think that if anything can be attributed to my work as an architect, its foundation will be seen to lie in this secret labour".
Undoubtedly, Le Corbusier's passion with painting was fuelled by his association with the French artist Amde Ozenfant, whom he met in Paris around 1917. To coincide with their first exhibition, they published a 'purist' manifesto entitled Aprs le Cubisme in the cultural magazine Esprit Nouveau, in which they proclaimed their dedication to restore order through art after the chaos of war: "The war is over; everything will be re-organized; everything will become clear and clean". This intellectual distinction between purism and cubism and the ascendancy towards an 'ordered' art occupied Le Corbusier's painting throughout the 1920s. He painted almost exclusively still lifes incorporating household ustensils, bottles and glasses which he standardised into simple forms, sometimes overlaying them against each other. He re-arranged these objects in his imagination, often defying and exploring the rules of gravity and perspective.
In the present work, all the attributes of the purist style have been perfected: the bright and earthy colours, the simplification of objects into more geometric shapes, the flattened plane (where objects are painted as if the artist is directly above or standing directly in front of them), the absense of 'decorated' objects and the order of the composition. To complete the aesthetic balance of the present work, Le Corbusier has signed and dated it centrally, having decided that year to adopt the name of Le Corbusier, rather than use his own. In the words of the artist in his 1921 essay Le Purisme: "The highest delectation of the human mind is the perception of order, and the greatest human satisfaction is the feeling of collaboration or participation in this order".
Although Le Corbusier is universally reknown for his architectural achievements, painting was equally important to him. Inspiration for many of his buildings has its root in his paintings, drawings and writings and vice versa. The two disciplines of painting and architecture were symbiotic for him. He said of painting: "I think that if anything can be attributed to my work as an architect, its foundation will be seen to lie in this secret labour".
Undoubtedly, Le Corbusier's passion with painting was fuelled by his association with the French artist Amde Ozenfant, whom he met in Paris around 1917. To coincide with their first exhibition, they published a 'purist' manifesto entitled Aprs le Cubisme in the cultural magazine Esprit Nouveau, in which they proclaimed their dedication to restore order through art after the chaos of war: "The war is over; everything will be re-organized; everything will become clear and clean". This intellectual distinction between purism and cubism and the ascendancy towards an 'ordered' art occupied Le Corbusier's painting throughout the 1920s. He painted almost exclusively still lifes incorporating household ustensils, bottles and glasses which he standardised into simple forms, sometimes overlaying them against each other. He re-arranged these objects in his imagination, often defying and exploring the rules of gravity and perspective.
In the present work, all the attributes of the purist style have been perfected: the bright and earthy colours, the simplification of objects into more geometric shapes, the flattened plane (where objects are painted as if the artist is directly above or standing directly in front of them), the absense of 'decorated' objects and the order of the composition. To complete the aesthetic balance of the present work, Le Corbusier has signed and dated it centrally, having decided that year to adopt the name of Le Corbusier, rather than use his own. In the words of the artist in his 1921 essay Le Purisme: "The highest delectation of the human mind is the perception of order, and the greatest human satisfaction is the feeling of collaboration or participation in this order".