Purist Compositions:: Nature Mortes and Nudes.

Reference: Le Corbusier - The Artist , works from The Heidi Weber Collection.


The Female Nude as the site of Modernity - (P. Meecham & J. Sheldon). "We should ask WHY, at the inception of the Modernist Movement, styling the Female Nude according to the pictorial habits of an African Sculptor was seen as a worthwhile formal exercise for western artists." (Modern Art: A Critical Introduction)
women :
1930 - 33

Purist Composition comes from Cubist Composition; but one knows that in Cubism the object which has served as starting point becomes changed with regard to its organization in the picture, often very much so. Purism, on the other hand, finds it important to keep the natural appearance of objects. It does not presume the right to change objects more than up to certain point, so it selects objects which make it possible to arrange them with-out any deformation, so that their type will not be changed. This explains, for example, the fusion of objects through a common contour, the connection of elements in order to create one single object in the picture. What Cubism often resolves with a change in the specificity of object, Purism accomplishes by organic arrangement.

figure d'hommes : 1929 trois baigneuses : 1935 profil : 1949

"I am an untiring painter. For a long time I have painted every day, although I only started painting at the age of 31. But painting has become suddely a holy thing for me... Art leads to perfection via paths with obstacles, which for the philistine are not passable.

 
nature morte au siphon : 1921 nature morte a la pile d'asiettes A. Ozenfant
.
 
la main ouverte : 1963 les mains : 1953 la mer : 1962

PURIST ART TWO : OZENFANT

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