Charles-Édouard JEANNERET dit LE CORBUSIER (1887 - 1965) - Lot 204

Charles-Édouard JEANNERET dit LE CORBUSIER (1887 - 1965) Three fisherwomen of Arcachon, 1936 Oil pastels and colored pencils on rag paper. Signed and dated lower right. (Small stains on the left). 21 x 26.6 cm A certificate from Mr. Éric Mouchet, dated February 20, 2023, will be given to the buyer. Trois Pêcheuses d'Arcachon (1936) is a very interesting drawing in more ways than one: it speaks to us of vacations and thus of private life, of Le Corbusier's attraction to vernacular cultures, of the expressiveness of the hands and feet of the figures he paints, and of the "Marriage of contours". Le Corbusier married in 1930, and his previously studious lifestyle gave way to a little leisure. Following in the footsteps of the artistic intelligentsia of the time, notably Jean Cocteau, Le Corbusier and his wife Yvonne spent their vacations in the Arcachon basin, at Piquey. Leisure activities, synonymous with games, dancing, the beach, music and, above all, friendship, began to invade Le Corbusier's body of work, never to leave it again. These vacations were also an opportunity to discover local crafts, which rightfully fascinated the architect. Since his youthful travels in 1907 and especially 1911, from which he brought back numerous popular ceramics from the Balkans, Le Corbusier has regularly expressed this interest in his sketchbooks and notebooks. As can be seen in this drawing, these fisherwomen sport two typical Arcachon Bay artifacts: they wear a distinctive, large, wrap-around headdress, to which Le Corbusier would devote several other drawings, and one of them carries on her back a mud skate known locally as a "mastoun", used to prevent sinking, and consisting of a large square plank that leaves in the damp ground the imprint of the cross with which its underside is equipped to prevent slipping. Le Corbusier obviously noticed the astonishing pattern of these successive crosses imprinted in the mud of the basin, and transcribed it in certain paintings of the period. On a more stylistic note, here again we see the care the artist has taken in drawing the feet and hands of the figures, and the power that emanates from them. Finally, this drawing shows some signs of a graphic concept dear to Le Corbusier, which he called the "Marriage of Contours". This consists in building compositions in which a single line draws two figures, just as the architect's pencil line delimits two spaces. The curves of bodies were Le Corbusier's favorite motif for putting this intellectual exercise into practice during the 1930s. We can see here that the outline of two arms or two legs can be the result of a single stroke, which naturally influences the whole composition and requires the artist to have a thorough knowledge of human morphology.