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Lot Essay
Painted over a number of years, 1927, 1938, and completed in 1944, Nature morte et figure is a monumental work that incorporates many of the key themes and motifs that had dominated Le Corbusier’s plastic oeuvre. A kaleidoscopic array of bold colours and forms, this painting can be seen as a summation of Le Corbusier’s work as a painter and architect. Throughout his life, painting remained a central aspect of Le Corbusier’s multi-faceted artistic practice. He regarded his painting as an essential part of his oeuvre as a whole, 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’ (Le Corbusier, quoted in H. Gadient, ‘In the Service of Poetry’, in H. Weber, Le Corbusier – The Artist: Works from the Heidi Weber Collection, Zurich & Montreal, 1988, n.p.). At the centre of the composition, a single dark outline denotes the form of a large bottle, next to which, on the left hand side, the statuesque figure of a woman similarly fills the entire height of the canvas. Amidst a plethora of other forms, shapes and facets of colour, these two objects illustrate the two primary components of Le Corbusier’s prolific pictorial oeuvre: the still-life and the human figure. Elsewhere in the large, multi-partite composition, a pipe, and a wooden triangle – an architect’s instrument – serve as visual symbols of the artist himself. Filled with the archetypal images of the artist’s practice, Nature morte et figure is a panoramic and immersive vision of Le Corbusier’s life as an artist, a dynamic and celebratory work that encapsulates the many different facets of his pluralistic career.
Le Corbusier began this large composition in 1927, one of the most pivotal periods of his career as a painter. Having parted ways with his purist collaborator Amédée Ozenfant in 1925, Le Corbusier began to adopt a freer painterly idiom in his work, looking to nature for inspiration. While his purist compositions were primarily composed of functional, mass-produced and uniform objects – glasses, carafes and siphons amongst others – pure plastic forms that were represented in their most generalised and depersonalised state, in the mid-1920s, the artist expanded his repertoire of objects. He started to introduce what he termed objets à réaction poétique – objects that evoked poetry for the viewer. Finding these unique objects from the natural world – shells, pebbles, pieces of wood or bones – Le Corbusier began including these organic pieces alongside the functional, pure forms of Purism into his painting. In doing so, the rigid structure of his earlier purist compositions softened, becoming infused with a looser, more organic configuration. Nature morte et figure encapsulates this shift: the tightly regulated battalions of vessels that stood in rigid formation in the artist’s earlier purist compositions have broken rank and disappeared. Instead, soft organic forms and near-abstract amorphic shapes intermingle with them, floating across the composition as they intersect with fattened geometric planes of colour.
In addition to these natural objects, it was also in the late 1920s that Le Corbusier turned to the figure as the subject for his art. A theme that had been completely expunged from his earlier purist compositions, the female nude made a dramatic entrance in Le Corbusier’s painting in 1927 and came to dominate almost exclusively his work of the subsequent decade. Nude and clothed, stationary and in motion, dancing or reclining, the female figure appeared in numerous guises in all aspects of his oeuvre, infusing Le Corbusier’s art with a new softness and sensuality. As Le Corbusier explained, referring to himself, as he frequently did, in the third person, ‘Already since 1927, Le Corbusier started to focus on the drawing of the figure. From 1927 to 1937, he realised an enormous number of drawings… The human figure is now in all of the works in combination with objects and precise locations’ (Le Corbusier, quoted in N. Jornod & J.P. Jornod, Le Corbusier, Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint, vol. 1, Milan, 2005, p. 426). His wife, Yvonne Gallis, whom he married in 1930, often served as the model for many of these works. In the present work, a totemic, highly simplified figure of a woman dominates the left-hand side of the canvas. While her head and shoulders are legible, the rest of her body dissolves into planes of interlocking colour and line. Her breast is denoted by the bird’s eye view of a wine glass, while her legs are just visible, her left foot outturned and wearing a heeled shoe.
After beginning this work in 1927, Le Corbusier returned to it in 1938, and finally in 1944, when it was completed. In the 1940s, Le Corbusier created works that are known as his ‘Acoustic paintings’. Beginning in 1942, in the midst of the Second World War, while Le Corbusier was living in exile in Ozon, in the Pyrenees, these paintings, created alongside a number of sculptures, brought together in visual form, concepts of sound and space. Combining previously used motifs with strange new, curvilinear and volumetric forms, these works have a distinctly surrealist feel. Painted in the midst of this ‘Acoustic’ period, Nature morte et figure includes some of these amorphic forms, namely the curving, pale turquoise element that dominates the right hand side of the composition.
Colour abounds in this multi-faceted and exuberant painting. While in his purist works Le Corbusier had worked with a limited and restrained colour palette, from the late 1920s onwards, colour 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 colour in complex arrangements. Yet, in addition to this, colour allowed Le Corbusier to impart a sense of poeticism and harmony into his practice, both artistic and architectural. ‘Colour is an immediate and spontaneous expression of life’, the artist once stated (Le Corbusier, quoted in H. Weber, Le Corbusier – The Artist: Works from the Heidi Weber Collection, Zurich & Montreal, 1988, n.p.), and Nature morte et figure, with its multi-hued explosion of colour, perfectly encapsulates this strongly felt sentiment.
Le Corbusier began this large composition in 1927, one of the most pivotal periods of his career as a painter. Having parted ways with his purist collaborator Amédée Ozenfant in 1925, Le Corbusier began to adopt a freer painterly idiom in his work, looking to nature for inspiration. While his purist compositions were primarily composed of functional, mass-produced and uniform objects – glasses, carafes and siphons amongst others – pure plastic forms that were represented in their most generalised and depersonalised state, in the mid-1920s, the artist expanded his repertoire of objects. He started to introduce what he termed objets à réaction poétique – objects that evoked poetry for the viewer. Finding these unique objects from the natural world – shells, pebbles, pieces of wood or bones – Le Corbusier began including these organic pieces alongside the functional, pure forms of Purism into his painting. In doing so, the rigid structure of his earlier purist compositions softened, becoming infused with a looser, more organic configuration. Nature morte et figure encapsulates this shift: the tightly regulated battalions of vessels that stood in rigid formation in the artist’s earlier purist compositions have broken rank and disappeared. Instead, soft organic forms and near-abstract amorphic shapes intermingle with them, floating across the composition as they intersect with fattened geometric planes of colour.
In addition to these natural objects, it was also in the late 1920s that Le Corbusier turned to the figure as the subject for his art. A theme that had been completely expunged from his earlier purist compositions, the female nude made a dramatic entrance in Le Corbusier’s painting in 1927 and came to dominate almost exclusively his work of the subsequent decade. Nude and clothed, stationary and in motion, dancing or reclining, the female figure appeared in numerous guises in all aspects of his oeuvre, infusing Le Corbusier’s art with a new softness and sensuality. As Le Corbusier explained, referring to himself, as he frequently did, in the third person, ‘Already since 1927, Le Corbusier started to focus on the drawing of the figure. From 1927 to 1937, he realised an enormous number of drawings… The human figure is now in all of the works in combination with objects and precise locations’ (Le Corbusier, quoted in N. Jornod & J.P. Jornod, Le Corbusier, Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint, vol. 1, Milan, 2005, p. 426). His wife, Yvonne Gallis, whom he married in 1930, often served as the model for many of these works. In the present work, a totemic, highly simplified figure of a woman dominates the left-hand side of the canvas. While her head and shoulders are legible, the rest of her body dissolves into planes of interlocking colour and line. Her breast is denoted by the bird’s eye view of a wine glass, while her legs are just visible, her left foot outturned and wearing a heeled shoe.
After beginning this work in 1927, Le Corbusier returned to it in 1938, and finally in 1944, when it was completed. In the 1940s, Le Corbusier created works that are known as his ‘Acoustic paintings’. Beginning in 1942, in the midst of the Second World War, while Le Corbusier was living in exile in Ozon, in the Pyrenees, these paintings, created alongside a number of sculptures, brought together in visual form, concepts of sound and space. Combining previously used motifs with strange new, curvilinear and volumetric forms, these works have a distinctly surrealist feel. Painted in the midst of this ‘Acoustic’ period, Nature morte et figure includes some of these amorphic forms, namely the curving, pale turquoise element that dominates the right hand side of the composition.
Colour abounds in this multi-faceted and exuberant painting. While in his purist works Le Corbusier had worked with a limited and restrained colour palette, from the late 1920s onwards, colour 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 colour in complex arrangements. Yet, in addition to this, colour allowed Le Corbusier to impart a sense of poeticism and harmony into his practice, both artistic and architectural. ‘Colour is an immediate and spontaneous expression of life’, the artist once stated (Le Corbusier, quoted in H. Weber, Le Corbusier – The Artist: Works from the Heidi Weber Collection, Zurich & Montreal, 1988, n.p.), and Nature morte et figure, with its multi-hued explosion of colour, perfectly encapsulates this strongly felt sentiment.