Le Corbusier

Le-Chaux-de-Fonds (France), 1887 – Roquebrune-Cap-Martin (France), 1965

In 1887, Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier, was born in La-Chaux-de-Fonds (Switzerland) on October 6. His is a family of enamellers who worked for the watch industry. He studies printmaking at the School of Art in his hometown.

After completing his degree in 1907-1908, he began a series of trips that took him to Italy, Vienna and Paris, where he worked for fourteen months in Auguste Perret’s studio. Travel to the Balkans, Turkey, Asia Minor, Greece and Italy. When he returns, he moves to Paris; he lives at number 20 Rue Jacob, which will be his residence for the next seventeen years.

In 1918 he met Ozenfant, who encouraged him to develop his vocation. Together they create purism as a reaction to cubism, and publish the manifesto entitled ‘Après le Cubisme’. From 1925 he begins to design furniture in collaboration with Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand.

During the years 1928-29 he began to sign the paintings as Le Corbusier, his grandfather’s name. The appearance of the human figure in his painting coincides with the end of his ‘purist’ stage. He will work on different projects and during the years 1962-1963, exhibitions at the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris and in Florence.

Le Corbusier died of a heart attack on August 27, 1965.