PURISM

Purism
(1918-1925)

 Purism was another movement interested in a kind of utopian vision of art and the modern world. Purism was comprised of only two artists: Amédée Ozenfant and Edouard Jeanneret (Le Corbusier). In their own manifesto, Après le Cubisme, published in 1918, they criticized that the heirs of Cubism produced an art that was essentially decorative and ornamental which they believed to be inferior to an approach that would give attention to the basic, essential form of objects. Moreover, they believed that fantasy and individuality had no place in modern art.

   The machine became the artist's reference, the exemplary symbol of their age. Architectonic form most defines their paintings. The two artists remained faithful to the traditional genre of the still life and everyday objects-a bottle, a pipe, a tool, a musical instrument, and produced diagrammatic and colorful compositions, the outcome of a methodical line of thought and a methodical working method. Ultimately Jeanneret turned his attentions fully to architecture, which would be the logical extension of this approach.