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Purism, referring to the arts, was a movement that took place between 1918 and 1925 that influenced French painting and architecture. Purism was led by
Amédée Ozenfant Amédée Ozenfant (15 April 1886 – 4 May 1966) was a French cubist Painting, painter and writer. Together with Charles-Edouard Jeanneret (later known as Le Corbusier) he founded the Purism (arts), Purist movement. Education Ozenfant wa ...
and Charles Edouard Jeanneret (Le Corbusier). Ozenfant and Le Corbusier formulated an aesthetic doctrine born from a criticism of
Cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...
and called it Purism: where objects are represented as elementary forms devoid of detail. The main concepts were presented in their short essay ''Après le Cubisme'' (After Cubism) published in 1918.


Post World War I

Le Corbusier and Ozenfant were the creators of Purism. Fernand Léger was a principle associate. Purism was an attempt to restore regularity in a war-torn France post World War I. Unlike what they saw as 'decorative' fragmentation of objects in Cubism, Purism proposed a style of painting where elements were represented as robust simplified forms with minimal detail, while embracing technology and the machine. Purism culminated in Le Corbusier’s ''Pavillon de l'Esprit Nouveau'' (Pavilion of the New Spirit), constructed for the
International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts The International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts (french: Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes) was a World's fair held in Paris, France, from April to October 1925. It was designed by the Fren ...
in 1925. This included the work of Cubists
Juan Gris José Victoriano González-Pérez (23 March 1887 – 11 May 1927), better known as Juan Gris (; ), was a Spanish painter born in Madrid who lived and worked in France for most of his active period. Closely connected to the innovative artistic ge ...
and
Jacques Lipchitz Jacques Lipchitz (26 May 1973) was a Cubist sculptor. Lipchitz retained highly figurative and legible components in his work leading up to 1915–16, after which naturalist and descriptive elements were muted, dominated by a synthetic style of ...
. Following this exhibition the relationship between Le Corbusier and Ozenfant declined.


L'Esprit Nouveau

Ozenfant and Le Corbusier contributed extensively to an art magazine called ''L'Esprit Nouveau'' from 1920 to 1925 serving as a platform for propaganda towards their Purist movement.Eliel, Carol S. et al. (2001). ''L'Esprit Nouveau: Purism in Paris, 1918–1925''. New York: Harry Abrams, Inc.


Purist Manifesto

The Purist Manifesto lays out the rules Ozenfant and Le Corbusier created to govern the Purist movement. * Purism does not intend to be a scientific art, which it is in no sense. * Cubism has become a decorative art of romantic ornamentism. * There is a hierarchy in the arts: decorative art is at the base, the human figure at the summit. * Painting is as good as the intrinsic qualities of its plastic elements, not their representative or narrative possibilities. * Purism wants to conceive clearly, execute loyally, exactly without deceits; it abandons troubled conceptions, summary or bristling executions. A serious art must banish all techniques not faithful to the real value of the conception. * Art consists in the conception before anything else. * Technique is only a tool, humbly at the service of the conception. * Purism fears the bizarre and the ''original''. It seeks the pure element in order to reconstruct organized paintings that seem to be facts from nature herself. * The method must be sure enough not to hinder the conception. * Purism does not believe that returning to nature signifies the copying of nature. * It admits all deformation is justified by the search for the invariant. * All liberties are accepted in art except those that are unclear.


See also

*
Crystal Cubism Crystal Cubism (French: ''Cubisme cristal'' or ''Cubisme de cristal'') is a distilled form of Cubism consistent with a shift, between 1915 and 1916, towards a strong emphasis on flat surface activity and large overlapping geometric planes. The p ...
*
Section d'Or The Section d'Or ("Golden Section"), also known as Groupe de Puteaux or Puteaux Group, was a collective of Painting, painters, sculptors, poets and critics associated with Cubism and Orphism (art), Orphism. Based in the Parisian suburbs, the grou ...
* Orphism *
De Stijl ''De Stijl'' (; ), Dutch for "The Style", also known as Neoplasticism, was a Dutch art movement founded in 1917 in Leiden. De Stijl consisted of artists and architects. In a more narrow sense, the term ''De Stijl'' is used to refer to a body ...
*
Tubism Tubism is a term coined by the art critic Louis Vauxcelles in 1911 A notable ongoing event was the Comparison of the Amundsen and Scott Expeditions, race for the South Pole. Events January * January 1 – A decade after fe ...
*
Raoul Albert La Roche Raoul Albert La Roche (23 February 1889 - 15 June 1965) was a Swiss banker and art collector. He was especially interested in purism and cubism and his collections have been donated to museums in Switzerland and France. His home in Paris, ''Maiso ...


References


External links


Le Purisme, L'Esprit nouveau: revue internationale d'esthétique, 1920
Gallica, Bibliothèque nationale de France
Purisme, Agence photographique de la réunion des Musées nationaux
{{Authority control French art movements Modern art Art movements Abstract art 20th century in art 20th century in the arts Art movements in Europe French artist groups and collectives