Modern & Postwar Artists

Le Corbusier

1887 - 1965

Le Corbusier was visionary writer, theorist, and architect, and a lesser-known painter.

Born Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, he adopted his moniker when he began to author architectural designs and paintings. He had a fascination with proportion, modularity, and geometry, often taking his cue from classical architecture theory. His designs, however, were modernist and industrial. He fondly called houses “machines for living in,” and said that the base principal for design is that “it must be beautiful.”