OntwerperSwiss-French
Le Corbusier
2 actieve items
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret was born on 6 October 1887 in La Chaux-de-Fonds, a watchmaking town in the Swiss Jura. He trained as an engraver before traveling across Europe between 1907 and 1911, working briefly in the offices of Auguste Perret in Paris and Peter Behrens in Berlin. Both encounters shaped his understanding of reinforced concrete and industrial production. In 1920 he adopted the pseudonym Le Corbusier, derived from a maternal ancestor's name, and began publishing the journal L'Esprit Nouveau with painter Amédée Ozenfant, through which they promoted Purism - a stripped-down, machine-age aesthetic that rejected the decorative excess of Art Nouveau.
His 1927 essay "Five Points of a New Architecture" - pilotis, flat rooftop terrace, free floor plan, ribbon windows, and free facade - became the structural grammar of the International Style. Villa Savoye (1929) near Paris gave those principles their clearest built expression. Later projects pushed further: the Unité d'Habitation in Marseille (1952) stacked a self-contained urban community into a single concrete block; Notre Dame du Haut at Ronchamp (1955) departed entirely from the rational grid and showed a sculptural, almost organic expressionism. The urban planning commission for Chandigarh, India, gave him the rare opportunity to design an entire city center, completed in the 1950s and 1960s.
Furniture design occupied a distinct chapter of his practice. In 1927 he recruited architect Charlotte Perriand to head interiors and furniture within his studio; his cousin Pierre Jeanneret also contributed. Working together, they developed the LC series: the LC1 sling chair, the LC2 and LC3 upholstered cubic armchairs with exposed tubular steel frames, the LC4 chaise longue, and the LC6 dining table, all presented at the 1929 Salon d'Automne in Paris. The design premise was straightforward - furniture as equipment for living, assembled from industrial materials with no applied decoration. In 1964, the Italian manufacturer Cassina signed an exclusive worldwide licence with the co-authors and the Le Corbusier Foundation to produce these pieces, and they have remained in continuous production since. Le Corbusier also worked extensively as a painter, and produced lithographs and tapestry designs throughout his career.
He died on 27 August 1965 at Cap Martin in the south of France, where he drowned while swimming near his small holiday cabin. In 2016, UNESCO designated 17 of his buildings across seven countries as World Heritage Sites. At auction, the LC furniture consistently commands attention in the Nordic market: Bruun Rasmussen in Lyngby leads with nine recorded lots, followed by Bukowskis Stockholm with seven, and Stockholms Auktionsverk Hamburg with six. Top sales include a pair of LC3 armchairs by Cassina that achieved approximately 53,500 EUR, and an LC2 armchair pair that sold for 21,400 EUR. His printed works also appear regularly; a signed lithograph from 1955 has fetched 12,000 DKK. Prices for verified early Cassina editions and original prints remain firmly in demand, with the tubular steel seating representing the most active segment in the Nordic secondary market.