Le Corbusier

Le Corbusier’s purist phase came to an end in 1925, after which he and Amédée Ozenfant went their separate ways. In step with the work of Fernand Léger and Pablo Picasso, Le Corbusier freed himself from the rules of purism which he had imposed upon himself. His works then became more two-dimensional, more colourful and, most importantly of all, freer. At the same time, he retained his interest in still lifes, in which some of the same objects turned up again and again – his type-objects. New forms and objects were added to them, for example a glove on the right-hand side of the picture in this work. Le Corbusier developed the objects, their arrangement and the overall composition with the help of numerous sketches and studies. Some preliminary sketches show a siphon, a glass, a jam jar and a rectangular fruit bowl with rounded corners. With each subsequent sketch, the objects changed until this collage-type composition finally appeared.

In contrast to the earlier type-objects, the objects now lose their clear-cut industrial form. The siphon which gives the picture its name can be clearly seen. In the upper part, Le Corbusier has painted the mechanism of the siphon in great detail, but geometrically less strictly than before; shadings make the bottleneck seem almost three-dimensional, whereas the lower part is now only painted schematically; a narrow line forms the outline of the body of the siphon; the blue area can be interpreted as the contents of the siphon, but it does not fill the form. The clear-cut cylindrical shape is replaced by a freer design.

It is particularly striking to see how Le Corbusier varied the method of representation and showed a wide range of different forms and objects. Some of the objects have been painted as monochrome areas while others are depicted as volumes using shading and colour gradients, and some of them are only hinted at schematically. Organic forms alternate with mechanical and technical objects ranging from the glove to the siphon mechanism.