L'Oeuvre Plastique - Etude de Sculpture No 2, Deux Figures Assises. Sculpture Study No 2 - Two Seated Figures, 1938. by Charles-Édouard Jeanneret

Charles-Édouard Jeanneret - Le Corbusier, 1887-1967
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L'Oeuvre Plastique - Etude de Sculpture No 2, Deux Figures Assises. Sculpture Study No 2 - Two Seated Figures, 1938.

Original lithograph in colours. 1936/38. Signed in pencil. Signed and dated 1936 in the stone. Numbered (21) in pencl from the special edition of 100. Issued in the series 'L'Oeuvre Plastique, 1938.' Published by Albert Morancé, Paris 1938. From the rare signed edition apart from the album issue. One of Corbusier's earliest graphic works.
Note: To be included in the forthcoming catalogue by Mouchot.

Excellent impression with very strong colours. On off-white chine appliqué on a pale cream stiff wove backing sheet, as issued. Image generally in excellent condition; one tiny fault in the china paper surface lower left image; backing sheet with very slight traces of old mounting and framing. Sheet: 14 3/4 x 18 1/8ins. Image: 7 1/4 x 10 3/8ins (184x265mm)

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Few figures in the art of the 20th century played a more significant and influential role in the linking of painting and two-dimensional 'fine art' with the tangible plasticity of buildings both as everyday 'serviceable' objects and as three-dimensional art than did Le Corbusier. As an architect his handling of form, space and the 'urban unit' changed the whole course of the concept of the function of buildings and of their appearance as 'sculptural works of art'; as a painter he played a key role in the 1920's by taking the increasingly barren 'intellectual' approach to cubist form and, by linking it to the purity of shape found in manufactured objects, giving the movement a new relevance.

In the following decade of the 1930's Le Corbusier moved away from this cubist 'purism', and began to see monumentality of form and space as the way that the plastic and the two-dimensional could be linked. This very early lithograph, amongst his first graphic works, illustrates the application of his ideas to the central artistic theme of the 'seated nude'.

Signed impressions of the lithographs from this first period of Corbusier's oeuvre in prints have become very scarce indeed.