Untitled (Study for 'Violin and Violin Case')

For Le Corbusier, drawing and painting were sources of experimentation and part of his patient research – particularly with regard to his work as an architect. He mentioned on this subject:

“I believe that, if you attribute any significance to my work as an architect, it is this concealed work that must be given the greatest credit.”

This “concealed work” had its origins in Le Corbusier’s training as an engraver at La Chaux-de-Fonds. Drawing became a commonplace activity for him there. In his early drawings, the artist-architect repeatedly tried to capture and thus understand the essential forms and principal lines and structures of what he saw – of a landscape, for example. He attempted to penetrate into the “heart of the matter”, as he himself put it. In this way, he tried to find the concealed order behind the things. Later on, he would labour over his works in a slow and methodical process. He made sketches, studies and drafts for all his paintings, sculptures and buildings and developed compositions step by step.

This sketch was made around 1920, during Le Corbusier’s purist phase. He drew the outlines of the objects in pencil and added the shadows using fine hatching. This doubling of the contours achieved by the shadows reveals how Le Corbusier grappled with cubism. You seem to see the objects from different angles.

In addition to the violin and the violin case, we can see an arrangement of fruit on a plate at the bottom left, next to which stand a bottle and a glass, a book on the right and two carafes above them – or are we just seeing one along with its shadow? Other sketches referring to this composition have survived too. They differ in small variations of the objects depicted and in the drawing techniques used. The strictly geometrical alignment of the objects is a striking demonstration of the order of things. In addition to the objects, this sketch shows numerous auxiliary lines which run horizontally, vertically and diagonally across the sheet. Le Corbusier called them “tracés régulateurs”, meaning “regulating lines”. They are based on clear geometries, right angles and the Golden Section and prevent arbitrariness in a composition.