Tonight:
5°c
Le Corbusier, the artist, at the Barbican
Louise Jury, Chief Arts Correspondent18 Feb 2009
THE work of one of the 20th century's most celebrated and criticised architects is to be explored in the Barbican, a building he inspired.
Le Corbusier, the Swiss-born Modernist whose ideas on urban planning were hugely influential in the Fifties and Sixties, is to be celebrated with an exhibition that presents him as a painter, sculptor and writer.
Le Corbusier - real name Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris - was born in Switzerland in 1887 and became a citizen of France, where he died in 1965.
His ideas on living in skyscrapers and bulldozing districts to make way for tower blocks and multi-lane roads took root after the Second World War. He influenced Chamberlin, Powell and Bon, who designed the Barbican.
"The exhibition really shows how he was a polymath. We see his architecture but also his paintings, his sculptures and his books. We see him as a much more rich and diverse figure," said curator Lydia Yee.
Le Corbusier - The Art of Architecture opens at the Barbican Art Gallery tomorrow, with admission charge.
