Digital Guide

A 2     The Harmony of Things

Purism – An Art for the Age of Technical Progress

After moving to Paris, Jeanneret met the artist Amédée Ozenfant in 1917. Ozenfant, who was from a wealthy family, was extremely well-connected in Paris. Fascinated by modern technology, he was active in fields ranging from painting to automobile design.

This meeting led to a close collaboration. Ozenfant introduced Jeanneret to the Paris avant-garde. Together, the two developed Purism. This art movement builds upon and distinguishes itself from Cubism, a style of avant-garde art that took hold in Paris in the 1910s.

In a joint manifesto, they describe Purism as a new, rational art for a society of technical progress. In the period after the First World War, there was a proliferation of avant-garde, revolutionary visions for the renewal of art and society. Ozenfant and Jeanneret used standardized, industrially produced everyday products like bottles, glasses, and plates as pictorial subjects.

They used these objects to create rigidly geometric compositions bordering on abstraction. Defamiliarized, the objects are reduced to overlapping contours and surfaces. While making sketches for their paintings, they used “traces régulateurs” – geometric guidelines – to divide the picture plane and unite the objects in a harmonious “order.”

1 The Fireplace

On the back of this rigorously composed painting, which hovers between representational depiction and abstract composition, Jeanneret noted: ‘This is my first painting.’ Oil painting was not part of Jeanneret’s training at the art school in La Chaux-de-Fonds. It was only in the summer of 1918 that Amédée Ozenfant introduced Jeanneret to oil painting. Before that, he had painted with pastels or watercolours. By their first joint exhibition in December 1918, Jeanneret had also completed the painting Le bol rouge.

2 Objets-types

In Purism, industrially manufactured objects like bottles, jugs, glasses, and books played an important role. Jeanneret referred to them as objets-types (‘type objects’). He was interested in objects that fulfilled timeless and universal human needs, served as extensions of the human body, and had the simplest form to serve their function. One of Jeanneret’s favourite subjects was the pipe. As an enthusiastic pipe smoker, he had a considerable collection. The pipe, along with his round glasses, later became a kind of trademark for Le Corbusier.

3 Untitled (Portrait of Yvonne Le Corbusier)

Although Le Corbusier often sketched people in his surroundings, this painting is the only portrait he ever made. It shows his wife, Yvonne Gallis (1892–1957). The couple met in 1922. Gallis was from Monaco and worked as a model. Little is known about her and their life together. Her life was greatly influenced by Le Corbusier’s career, and she supported him in his work and numerous projects.

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