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Charles-Edouard Jeanneret: The Latest Architecture and News

Le Corbusier’s Paintings Showcased for the First Time Since 1966

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Trois baigneuses, 1935. Image © The Foundation Le Corbusier / FLC ADGAP

They say one cannot separate art from the artist, or perhaps in this case, the artist from the architect. Arguably one of the most criticized architects, Le Corbusier is often portrayed as cold and controlling. Depicting his more dreamy and humorous nature, the Nasjonalmuseet's exhibition titled, “Le Corbusier by the Sea,” draws upon his memories from his summer travels along the coast of southwest France.

Hosted in Villa Stenersen, one of the National Museum's venues, the exhibition showcases Le Corbusier's work as an artist during the period 1926-36. Not only does the exhibition include fifteen of his reproduced paintings alongside a collection of sketches, but also screens two films from Le Corbusier's own footage of his surrounding views.

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Drawing on the Road: The Story of a Young Le Corbusier's Travels Through Europe

Voyage Le Corbusier, by Jacob Brillhart, collects for the first time a compendium of sketchbook drawings and watercolors of Charles-Edouard Jeanneret—a young student who would go onto become the singularly influential modernist architect, Le Corbusier. Between 1907 and 1911, he traveled throughout Europe and the Mediterranean carrying an array of drawing supplies and documenting all that he saw: classical ruins, details of interiors, vibrant landscapes, and the people and objects that populated them.

Le Corbusier was a deeply radical progressive architect, a futurist who was equally and fundamentally rooted in history and tradition. He was intensely curious, constantly traveling, drawing, painting, and writing, all in the pursuit of becoming a better designer. As a result, he found intellectual ways to connect his historical foundations with what he learned from his contemporaries. He grew from drawing nature to copying fourteenth-century Italian painting to leading the Purist movement that greatly influenced French painting and architecture in the early 1920s. All the while, he was making connections between nature, art, culture, and architecture that eventually gave him a foundation for thinking about design.

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