Special Exhibition:
‘People Le Corbusier Drew’

Exhibition Period:
August 2020 to January 2021

Works Presented in the Exhibition:
Forty Works of Paintings by Le Corbusier:
— including oil paintings, prints and sketches —

Aim of the Exhibition:

In pursuit of functional architecture and design, Le Corbusier initiated a movement conceived with Amédée Ozenfant called ‘Purism,’ where such universal and stereotypical items/objects on the table as glasses, vases and bottles were depicted geometrically as basic forms without details. However, as an era of ‘Purism’ in the early half of the 1920s came to an end by the mid-1920s, Le Corbusier, accordingly, began his search and exploration for new themes in the late 1920s. Through his pursuit, what Le Corbusier found was ‘Poetic Objects.’ He showed partiality for such still or quiet organic matter as shells, bones and roots, as well as for things that leave and suggest a person’s warmth like gloves.
In time, Le Corbusier took on a lecture tour to South America toward the end of the 1920s. Looking at his sketchbook on that trip, many figures of exuberant women were depicted. As if it was a countering reaction to the abstinent Purism period, he began drawing/painting nude figures, and around this time onward, the majority of paintings of Le Corbusier were of human figures. Later on, admittingly, he said that he only painted female bodies.

In the collection of Taisei Corporation, which inherited the ‘Le Corbusier Collection’ by Theodor Ahrenberg, a longtime Swedish collector of Le Corbusier, the largest number of paintings are also works depicting women. This exhibition presents, accordingly, the paintings of women upon which Le Corbusier had focused most. However, because he also painted male figures, and additionally, rarely painted specific individuals. Consequently, the title of this exhibition became ‘People Le Corbusier Drew.’

We, at Galerie Taisei, are pleased to introduce Le Corbusier’s paintings here and sincerely wish that the visitors to this on-line exhibition will have an opportunity, through the presented exhibits, to consider and reflect by seeing what kind of human figures Le Corbusier chose to depict, contemplating upon what might have been his interest and what it meant for him.

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