Le Corbusier. Museum and collection Heidi Weber

5 june, 2007 - 3 september, 2007 /
Nouvel Building, Floor 1

The last seven years of the life of Charles Édouard Jeanneret-Gris’, better known from the 1920s as Le Corbusier (La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, 1887 - Provence, France, 1965), were bound by deep ties of friendship and cooperation with the Swiss Heidi Weber, owner of an interior design gallery in Zurich.

Le Corbusier insisted throughout his career that you could not to be a good architect if you did not possess great artistic sensitivity and therefore the key to his architecture was to be found in his paintings. Weber felt genuine admiration not only for his architecture but also for his furniture and artistic work, facets of Le Corbusier that were not very well known and which she proposed to spread. This relationship of friendship and trust materialised in 1959, when Weber obtained permission from the artist to produce and market metal furniture he had designed in 1929. Weber devoted herself almost exclusively to make the work of Le Corbusier known to the public, a project she developed through exhibitions of his paintings, sculptures, tapestries, prints and enamels, while increasing her own collection. This relationship influenced Le Corbusier’s production over these final seven years, who thus saw his aspirations fulfilled, long frustrated that his artistic contribution in these fields were not valued.

In 1960 Weber commissions Le Corbusier to build an exhibition pavilion, as he had wanted to do for some time, to exhibit his paintings, drawings and sculptures in a museum created by him. In 1967 the Heidi Weber Museum-Centre Le Corbusier in Zurich was inaugurated, the so-called Maison de l'Homme, a true summary of the architectural concepts of the artist who made this work the last link in the synthesis of the arts, an aim he pursued throughout his career.

This exhibition, which complements the one Centro de Arte Reina Sofía dedicated to him in 1987 entitled Le Corbusier (1887-1965), brings together a wide selection of works collected by Weber: paintings, sculptures, drawings, tapestries, enamels, etchings, lithographs and furniture as well as original documents of the construction of the pavilion in Zurich. The collection intends to reflect the architect's ideas regarding the exhibition of artworks and regain a somewhat domestic scale, in that way the pieces are exhibited in a more intimate environment with less height than usual. Among the pieces included is the painting La Caída de Barcelona (1939) which was donated to the Museum’s Collection thanks to the generous donation by Weber in 1987.

Exhibition´s details

Organized by: 
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
Curatorship: 
Juan Calatrava