Murale. Mural by Charles-Édouard Jeanneret

Charles-Édouard Jeanneret - Le Corbusier, 1887-1967
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Murale. Mural

Original etching with drypoint, engraving and aquatint in black ink. 1948. Signed in pencil with initials and inscribed as essai (trial proof). Very rare quite possibly unique proof before the edition and before the strong aquatint tone area was added tot he plate.
Ref: Weber 3; Ketterer Le Corbusier, 1970, No. 3.
Provenance: The archives from the artist?s estate; the artist?s widow.

Brilliant impression with a light hand-wiped ink-tone. On pale cream BFK Rives paper. Excellent unrestored condition. Full margins as proofed. Sheet: 7" x11". Plate: 4" x 6" (120x160mm).

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Murale is one of the outstanding small-scale drypoints in Corbusier?s early oeuvre in prints.

Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier, stands as one of the magisterial figures of the art and architecture of the twentieth century. As an architect his concept of urbanism and the organized groupings of the elements of a communal ?living centre?, as well as the expression of pure constructional elements within the aesthetics of architectural expression and form , has a fundamental impact on the whole course of mid-twentieth-century thinking. As an artist his first allegiance was to Cubism when he settled in Paris in 1917, but then alongside Leger and Ozenfant he was one of the creative forces in Purism, the use of a machine-age clarity of line and light to express form, construction and plane. By the end of the 1920?s and during the 30?s he moved onto a visual language in which the monumentality and sculptural complexity of the human figure became a symbol for a universal and abstract expression. At every stage he made a major contribution to the imagery of the twentieth century.

Murale is a very characteristic example of this concept of the use of the human figure as a sculptural expression. The link between the figures and the rectilinear forms typifies the balance between the figurative and the abstract in Corbusier?s art. Linear drawing was a key media of drypoint, etching and lithography. The majority of his prints date from the later years of his life, however, some of the most significant and creative works are from the earlier years and these, like Murale, are rarely seen on the market.