Show in Alessandria features architect's painting> - Evidence of the artistic double life of Le Corbusier, one of the most influential architects of the 20th century, has gone on show in a new exhibition in Alessandria.
Around 60 canvases, watercolours and sketches on display at Palazzo Monferrato reveal the Swiss-born Le Corbusier's enduring passion for painting, which he continued to indulge quietly alongside his glittering architectural career.
Many of the works have never been seen before in Italy and are on loan from Le Corbusier Foundation of Paris and international private collections.
''Le Corbusier's painting is certainly less well known than his extraordinary activities as an architect, but it's just as important,'' said Vincenzo Sanfo, one of the show's curators.
''History has re-labelled him for us as one of the greatest painters of the last century''.
Starting the show here are early works from when Charles-Edouard Jeanneret moved from Switzerland to Paris in 1917 and took his first steps as a professional artist, changing his name to Le Corbusier.
Key still lifes from this period, 'Nature Morte Puriste Verticale' (1922) and 'Nature Morte au Phare' (1928), illustrate the fundamentals of Purism, the movement Le Corbusier founded with French painter Amedee' Ozenfant as an offshoot of Cubism, moving away from the fragmentation of images and concentrating instead on the basic, essential form of objects.
As Le Corbusier's art increasingly took a back seat to his career as an architect, he tried to snatch a few hours to paint in his conservatory every day, abandoning Purism for a more spontaneous style with greater freedom of form and colour.
Fleshy, thick-limbed female figures began to appear regularly in his work, and on display here are 'Femme dans l'embrassure d'une porte' (1933), showing his wife Yvonne on holiday in Vezelay, and the bosomy embrace of 'Les Deux Soeurs' (1938).
Next on show are works from the Taureaux cycle, inspired by herds of robust cattle that bewitched Le Corbusier when he left Paris to spend time in the French countryside during World War II.
Pastels such as 'Taureau I' (1952) and 'Etude pour Taureau XII' (1955) centre on a powerful and sometimes sinister image of a bull's horned head.
Finally, the recurring theme of hands in his later work is showcased, as in his 1955 collage 'La Main Ouverte' where a huge disembodied hand opens skywards above a beach.
Many of the works on show have an informal, unfinished quality that curator Achille Bonito Oliva attributes to ''a devouring creative speed''.
Sanfo explains Le Corbusier used art to record his daily adventures and passions as ''a sort of intimate diary''.
''The spontaneity of the works gives us a better understanding of the creative process of the great architect and allows us to see the embryonic beginnings of some of his major architectural insights,'' Sanfo added.
Among the highlights of Le Corbusier's building design legacy are Villa Savoye in Poissy, France, the Curutchet House in La Plata, Argentina, the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo and the Palace of Justice in Chandigarh, India.
Le Corbusier died during a morning swim in the sea at Roquebrune on the Cote d'Azure in France in 1965.
'Le Corbusier - Paintings and Drawings' runs at Palazzo Monferrato in Alessandria until 30 March 2008.
