Le Corbusier, whose real name was Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, was born in 1887 in La Chaux-de-Fonds, where he initially trained as an engraver and chaser at the local École d’Art. Under the influence of his teacher Charles L’Eplattenier, he then turned to painting and later to architecture. Despite their differences, there was an extremely productive dialog between these disciplines throughout his life: In Le Corbusier’s case, freer painting also became a laboratory for ideas that later found their way into his architectural designs. While his architecture strives for functional rationality, clarity, rigor and order, painting offers him space for intuition, emotion and free artistic play. Le Corbusier’s genius lies in the combination of these opposites.

The exhibition shows paintings, drawings, prints, photographs and architectural models and takes visitors on a journey through the 20th century with its many artistic and social upheavals.