Le Corbusier – Cortége Portfolio (B&W)
Chute de Barcelone – Le Corbusier Print Lithograph
Year: 1960
Black and White of 150
Medium: Traditional stone lithograph on BFK Rives wove paper printed by Atelier Mourlot
Dimensions: 102 cm x 71 cm
By the end of the 1940s, Le Corbusier had produced, or rather had printed, about twenty works, the later ones in 1938 printed by the lithographer Fernand Mourlot. Tériade, the publisher of his “Le poéme de l’angle droit”, encouraged him to devote himself more to lithography. This reinforced LC in his determination to make his artistic work known to a broader public.
At the end of the 1950s, he became acquainted with Heidi Weber, a native of Basel living in Zurich. Impressed by his artistic work, Weber worked on making his artistic oeuvre more widely known, and also attended to having further editions of his works printed as well as to the printing of new graphics.
THE ARTIST
LE CORBUSIER
b. 1887 La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland
Le Corbusier cannot be comprehended without including him as a painter, a draftsman and a graphic artist. Art was the foundation with which he built his architectural work upon and develop his modernist vision. Art inspired Le Corbusier to explore his ideas of architectural space, visions which were completely unique and yet to be realised at the time. He experimented with the dissolution and reconstruction of the three dimensional shapes, which can later be seen in his buildings and even in his urban architectural projects. The development that he underwent as an artist was parallel to his development as an architect. It is not without reason that he placed importance on the statement that the key to his architecture was to be found in his artistic work. Le Corbusier cannot be comprehended without including him as a painter, a draftsman and a graphic artist. Art was the foundation with which he built his architectural work upon and develop his modernist vision. Art inspired Le Corbusier to explore his ideas of architectural space, visions which were completely unique and yet to be realised at the time. He experimented with the dissolution and reconstruction of the three dimensional shapes, which can later be seen in his buildings and even in his urban architectural projects. The development that he underwent as an artist was parallel to his development as an architect. It is not without reason that he placed importance on the statement that the key to his architecture was to be found in his artistic work.
By 1920's Le Corbusier was an established architect, but it wasn't until forty years after his death that he gained recognition for his artwork, and the significance it held in art history. He gained strength and inspiration from his art: for decades he devoted every morning to his artwork. Art was “the key to my existence.”