Background
Charles Corbusier was born in Switzerland on October 6, 1887.
Charles Corbusier was born in Switzerland on October 6, 1887.
Le Corbusier did not have formal academic training as an architect. He was attracted to the visual arts and at the age of fifteen he entered the municipal art school in La-Chaux-de-Fonds which taught the applied arts connected with watchmaking. Three years later he attended the higher course of decoration, founded by the painter Charles L'Eplattenier, who had studied in Budapest and Paris.
The years from 1922 to 1940 were as remarkably rich in architecture as in city planning projects. As was always to be the case with Le Corbusier, unbuilt projects, as soon as they were published and circulated, created as much of a stir as did the finished buildings. In the Salon d’Automne of 1922, Le Corbusier exhibited two projects that expressed his idea of social environment and contained the germ of all the works of this period.
The ideas for city planning set forth at the Salon d’Automne, an annual semi-official exhibition, were taken up again and developed in 1925 at the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, in a pavilion that was to be a "manifesto of the esprit nouveau." In this little duplex-flat, the interior walls violently coloured under the influence of the painter Fernand Léger, Le Corbusier exhibited his first collection of industrially produced furniture.
During these years, in fact, Le Corbusier’s social ideals were realized on two occasions. One of these was in 1925-26 when, thanks to the financial support of an industrialist, he built at Pessac, near Bordeaux, a workers’ city of 40 houses in the style of the Citrohan House. In 1927 the architect participated in the international exposition of the Deutscher Werkbund, an association of various groups concerned with producing functional objects of high aesthetic value. For this exposition Le Corbusier constructed two houses in the experimental residential quarter of Weissenhof at Stuttgart.
Although Le Corbusier was from the beginning most interested in building for large numbers of people, during the prewar period he built primarily for privileged individuals who commissioned individual houses. They were functional in design and ascetic in appearance, incorporating rigorous geometric forms and bare facades. The first was for Ozenfant in 1922, followed by, among others: the house of the Swiss collector Raoul La Roche (1923), which later became the quarters of the Le Corbusier Foundation in Paris (1968); the villa (1927) of Michael Stein, a brother of the expatriate American writer and patron of Fauvism and Cubism Gertrude Stein; the Villa Savoye (1929-31), at Poissy, set in a lush, rural landscape on slender concrete pillars.
In 1927 Le Corbusier participated in the competition set by the League of Nations for the design of its new centre in Geneva. His project, with its wall of insulating and heating glass, is one of the finest examples of the architect’s gift for functional analysis.
Le Corbusier thought that he would finally be able to apply his theories of planning in the reconstruction of France. He prepared in 1945 two plans for the cities of Saint Dié and La Pallice-Rochelle. At Saint Dié, in the Vosges Mountains, he proposed regrouping the 30,000 inhabitants of the destroyed town into five functional skyscrapers. These plans were rejected, but they subsequently circulated throughout the world and became doctrine. Le Corbusier was bitter, however, and his bitterness increased when he was named a member of the jury of architects for the construction of the United Nations building in New York City instead of being asked to design it himself.
Le Corbusier was not greatly impressed by his late recognition. He seemed to prefer the image of a solitary and persecuted genius. Nevertheless, he continued to conceive new projects until the end of his life: an art centre for Frankfurt (1963), the Olivetti computer centre in Milan (1963), the Palais des Congrès in Strasbourg (1964), and the French embassy in Brasília (1964).
Le Corbusier died suddenly in 1965 while swimming. The man who had thought himself so misunderstood in his own time was given a national funeral.
Ozon
Le Modulor
La mer
Taureau XI
Nature pâle à la lanterne
Taureau I
Le déjeuner près du phare
Nature morte au siphon
Saint Sulpice
Deux bouteilles
Deux femmes fantasques
Icône
La dame au chat et à la théière
La cathédrale
Totem
Demi relief
Nature morte du Pavillon de l'Esprit Nouveau
Taureau VI
Madame, la table est dressée
Abstract Composition/Figures in a Landscape
La danseuse et le petit félin
Phillips Pavilion at the World’s Fair in Brussels
L'enfant est là
Icône
L'horreur surgit
Villa Savoye in Poissy
Église Saint-Pierre de Firminy
La femme au guéridon et au fer à cheval
Ozon, Opus I
Tête de femme, Vézelay
La pêcheuse d'huitres
Totem 3
Composition. Table d'apéritif et chien
Femme au repos
Ubu
Pieta. Descente de croix
Nature morte Vézelay
Deux femmes assises
Femme et mains
Ubu (Totem)
Femme dansant
La cheminée
Taureau X
Abstract Composition
Mobile
Composition avec une poire
La lanterne et le petit haricot
La main et la boite d'allumettes
Sitting machine
Secretariat Chandigarh
Taureau XVI
Fleurs et livres
Taureau V
Still Life
Deux musiciennes
Nature morte
Petite confidence
Divinité baroque
Deux femmes au repos
Guitare verticale (1ère version)
Thèmes Ubu Parurge et Alma Rio
Nature morte au hachoir
I was dreaming (first version)
Panurge
Still Life Filled with Space
Cubist Pipe Lines
Les mains
Nature morte à la racine et au cordage jaune
Tartu Rebase Street
Je rêvais (1ère version)
Ozon II
Composition avec la lune
Eau, ciel, terre
Deux figures
Fauteuil à dossier basculant, 1928
Peinture murale, 35 rue de Sèvres à Paris
Guitare verticale (2ème version)
Palace of Assembly Chandigarh
Deux femmes debout (au tronc d'arbre)
Femme
Le bol rouge
L'enfant est là (1ère étude)
Divinité baroque
Deux femmes debout à la chaise
Sans titre
Vue sur les toits de Paris
Taureau VIII
Nature morte au siphon
Tête nègre (étude)
Les mains
Taureau IX
Bouteille et livre rose
Nature morte à l'oeuf
Nature morte au violon rouge
Etude quatre mains, lithographies
La pinasse
Portrait de Yvonne Le Corbusier
Carton pour tapisserie (Marie Cuttoli)
Nature morte Le bûcheron
Taureau XIII
Deux bouteilles et le coquetier
Etude pour sculpture
Femme
Icône 3
Le petit homme
Portrait de femme à la cathédrale de Sens
Ozon
Torse de femme avec mains
Les mains
Deux femmes étendues
Untitled
La bouteille de vin orange
Chapel of Note-Dame-Du-Haut
Femme et coquillage sur fond bleu
Adieu Von
Taureau
Ozon III
Still Life
Nature morte aux nombreux objets
Taureau (bull or beefy man) XVIII
Femmes New-York
Member superior com; Member French delegation to United Nations, New York (headquarters. Member National Institute Arts and Letters United States of America. Member American Academy Arts and Scis.