Nature morte horizontale, traces géométriques, motif des quatre poissons

Le Corbusier’s influence has few parallels within the 20th century; his unique and visionary approach to art and architecture established a new modern vision for living that has become an integral part of 21st century life. Drawing remained a central aspect of Le Corbusier’s his multi-faceted artistic practice throughout his career. It was an indispensable medium not only for communicating his utopian architectural visions but also for exercising his artistic and purely plastic ideas. Le Corbusier’s works on paper exemplify the thoughts of the artist in the creative moment, complete with revisions and new decisions throughout which makes them significantly compelling documents of the creative process, active on the page. Form in the Service of Poetry: Five Drawings by Le Corbusier from a Private Collection exemplifies Le Corbusier’s mind-to-hand process through these five well-worked and brightly colored pieces; clear successes that are all the more exciting in their immediacy, having occurred spontaneously, fluidly and unerringly.
Painting and drawing fulfilled an essential part of the artist’s oeuvre as a means through which to express himself in a more personal manner, and most importantly, as a vehicle through which to attain a pure form of poetry. “There are no sculptors only, no painters only, no architects only,” he declared in 1962, towards the end of his life. “the plastic incident fulfils itself in an overall form in the service of poetry” (quoted in H. Weber, Le Corbusier–The Artist: Works from the Heidi Weber Collection, Zurich, 1988).
Combining many pertinent motifs from his developing post-Purist oeuvre, this collection of colorful and expressive works on paper provides panorama of Le Corbusier’s visual lexicon. Incorporating still life—having evolved since the rigid and tightly structured Purist compositions— the female figure, amorphous and organic forms that the artist described as objets à réaction poétique, and of course, ubiquitous elements of interior architecture and landscape, these works provide a view into the arsenal of signs he would develop into the new and distinctive visual language of his mature career.
The move towards color stands out as a singular triumph and was a measure that would provide significant stimulus for the artist after his Purist period. From the late 1920s onwards, color burst into Le Corbusier’s art and remained one of the most prominent characteristics of his plastic oeuvre. He drew upon this formal tool to construct his compositions, using overlapping and interlocking planes of unmodulated color in complex arrangements. Yet, in addition to this, color allowed Le Corbusier to impart a sense of poeticism and harmony into his practice, both artistic and architectural. As the artist once stated, “Color is an immediate and spontaneous expression of life” (quoted in ibid.). These five works celebrate the new-found freedom that the artist enjoyed into his late career, expounding the pleasures and formal possibilities of color within his refined formal dialogue.
Jean-Pierre Duport from the Fondation Le Corbusier has confirmed the authenticity of this work.