Charles-Edouard JEANNERET known as LE CORBUSIER... Lot 235

Charles-Edouard JEANNERET known as LE CORBUSIER (1887-1965) The Dance, 1933 Collage on Salubra paper and Indian ink. Monogrammed and dated lower left. 27,4 x 39,3 cm A certificate of Mr. Éric Mouchet, dated February 20, 2023, will be given to the buyer. This collage, which represents three women in bathing suits dancing, illustrates the rare periods of leisure that the architect enjoyed with his wife in the 1930s, usually at Piquey on the Arcachon basin. It is designed from samples of wallpapers of the Salubra brand. It is at the request of this Swiss brand of wallpapers that Le Corbusier has imagined a collection of colors and patterns (weft of polka dots and squares, lattice) marketed under his name from 1931. The creation of this range of wallpapers constituted a revolution in the work, both plastic and architectural Le Corbusier. While he advocated in the late 1920s a precise use of colors in architecture, he faced the difficulty of obtaining on the sites the exact colors he wanted because the paints were mixed on site by craftsmen. Le Corbusier then considered Salubra papers, when they were marketed, as "paint on a roll" which provided the guarantee of reliable colors always identical. In the plastic field, it appears that it was thanks to the samples he had on hand of papers from this range designed by him, that Le Corbusier had the idea to start making collages, later called "Papiers collés". The collages currently identified that use fragments of Salubra paper from the 1931 range are 15 in number, all made between 1933 and 1938, and this one, being the only one known from 1933, is probably the artist's first collage. The Centre Pompidou holds a smaller one on a more technical subject (Sketch of "Mural" for the Pavillon des temps nouveaux, inv. AM 1999-2-73). Le Corbusier's practice of collage became more pronounced after the war, and had a considerable influence on his painting and architecture, but also on his prints and tapestries. Stylistically, this work with its outré gestures is very typical of a series of works that the artist painted between 1932 and 1933. Usually depicting a group of naked women dancing or resting by a boat, these works with their unrestrained, expressionistic gestures also evoke the drawings of sportsmen that Willi Baumeister drew in the same period. The two men knew each other well, as Baumeister had followed the construction of Le Corbusier's houses in Weissenhof in Stuttgart in 1927.