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Le Corbusier (1887-1965) A Master Lithograph

Attending design school in the mid-1970s, most professors were apostles of the late Le Corbusier. We studied his extensive list of buildings, yet most professors were fixated on the small French Roman Catholic Chapel called Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp. On the other hand I loved his contemporary straight-lined Villa Savoye - “House as Machine”. At that time I did not understand he was so accomplished, as Ernesto N. Rogers wrote in an 1963 opinion piece, he was a “painter, sculptor, architect, and poet - like Michelangelo, who styled himself this peerless poet of our age has contrived to express contemporary life.”

All these various listed activities required a pencil or charcoal. He was known for drawing all the time and was attributed the comment “why talk when you can draw”. Which would make sense, the communication tool of an artist, designer, architect and poet is the pencil. You can erase, modify, change your thoughts and clarify, likewise with charcoal, you can smudge or move the line. He also used watercolors, all three media have forgiving qualities.

His ability to draw and paint produced an endless list of artworks that are held by his foundation namesake and museums around the world. His artwork is not as well known as perhaps Joan Miro and Pablo Picasso, but his work is a combination of biomorphic shapes and figurative abstraction. Many critics describe him as one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century who were living in Paris in the post-cubist period that was transitioning to an industrialized world.

As an architect, he knew and understood human dimensions and how humans needed to interact with the built environment. This same architect that understood precision drafting also understood how to create compelling vertical images that required us to gaze, study and interpret. His abstract day-dreams could take the human figure, twist the head, add a monumental green hand, provide anatomical parts with a weightless wire-line, and establish a human-animal form with simple primary color planes, as shown below in “Taureau”.


"Taureau"
110 CM X 75 CM
Signed in the lithograph and dated
Framed at Jos. Fischl, NYC. 

This work expresses the multifaceted nature of Le Corbusier’s talent, one that combines his understanding of scale, balance and form with art and poetic overtones of fantasy and a double-image. The architect knows how to balance the red, green and yellow. The attention getting yellow with a playful red stripe creates a center focus for the composition. Within the red and yellow, a circular meandering line plays a trick, are they breasts or eyes creating a second facial image. Only the viewer can decide.

The “Taureau” image was included in “Oeuvre Lithographic” by Heidi Weber, published by the Centre Le Corbusier, Zurich, 1968. The book included 29 full-color plates and was unpaginated. It is estimated that this lithograph printed by Fernand Mourlot, Paris, was an edition of just over 300 prints, however, they were unnumbered. It is signed in the lithograph stone with a full signature and an “L-C” with a date of 17-2-1963.

Musee des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, Switzerland, celebrated the 100th anniversary of his birth in a 1987 retrospective called Le Corbusier Secret. The exhibit was reviewed by Ernest Beck. Beck stated that the most important work in the show pointed to the growing affinity between his artistic and architectural vocabulary in the late 40s and 50s.

Le Corbusier was known as Corbu by his close friends, but he was born Charles-Édouard Jeanneret. Corbu, a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, writer, and pioneer of what is now called modern architecture - international style. For those of us who spent endless hours in the studio creating built environments, we see his Corbu’s prints as a perfect pairing with his Salon d‘Autumne furniture designs and the designs of other noted architectural modernist: Eero Saarinen’s tables, Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona seating and Marcel Breuer’s chairs. 

Le Corbusier's art is tangible proof that he created abstract graphic delineations of our civilization and masterpieces of our times.  Magnifique, Le Corbusier, Magnifique!! 

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Pierre Matisse Gallery Represented Le Corbusier
Gallery Announcement from 1959 

  

Reference Notes:


It should be noted that Le Corbusier went on two major sketching trips after standard secondary schooling. It was during these trips across Europe that he developed an eye for details, including architectural and construction details. In Jacob Brillhart's book, Voyage, Le Corbusier, Billhart documents the drawings of young Le Corbusier's travels. The book illustrates Le Corbusier's skills and talent for sketching, yet points out that Le Corbusier studied architecture and art outside the normal paths of education and did not possess formal degrees.

Ernesto N. Rogers, Le Corbusier’s Day Dream, Arts & Architecture (Magazine), Arts & Architecture, Inc., Los Angeles, CA, Sept. 1963, pages 16, 17, 30 & 31. 


Heidi Weber, Oeuvre Lithographique, Centre Le Corbusier, Zurich, 1968, unpaginated 66 pages.  


Ernest Beck, Le Corbusier Secret, Reviews, ARTnews Magazine, ARTnews Associates, New York, NY, Sept. 1987, page 163.


Murakami Gallery, New York, NY, Le Corbusier Oeuvre Lithographique, June 28 - August 27, 1994. 


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©2020. Waller-Yoblonsky Fine Arts Blogspot 

Waller-Yoblonsky Fine Art is a research collaborative, working to track artists that got lost and overlooked due to time, changing styles, race, gender and/or sexual orientation. Our frequent blogs highlight artists and art movements that need renewed attention with improved information for the researcher and art collectors. The blog was created by Mr. Waller and all written materials were obtained by the Fair Use Section 107, of The Copyright Act. #waller-yoblonskyblogspot #walleryoblonskyblogspot #lecorbusier

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