Restavracia Nshowed Le Corbusier

07 October 2012

Restavracia N showed Le Corbusier

On October 8 a private viewing of the exhibition “Le Corbusier. Secrets of Creativity. Between Painting and Architecture” took place in the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts.

The party was organised by the real estate development company RESTAVRACIA N with the assistance of the Third Rome company and confined to the 125th birthday of Charles ?douard Jeanneret-Gris, world-famous under the pseudonym of Le Corbusier.

Born in Switzerland, the master possessed a wonderful gift that allowed him to make a significant contribution not only to architectural craft but also to other spheres of plastic arts: painting, graphics, decorative arts, design; and to gain wide popularity all over the world.

The exhibition organised by the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Le Corbusier’s Foundation in Paris and AVC Charity Foundation opened in the Pushkin Museum on September 24and will extend until November18.

Jean-Louis Cohen, a leading specialist in history of world and Russian architecture, Professor at Princeton University and NYU, acted as the curator of the exposition. The designer of the exhibition was Nathalie Crini?re already known in Russia as the designer of the exhibition “Dior: Under the Sign of Art” that took part in the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in 2011.

Thanks to the Pushkin Museum, for the first time in Russia such a large scale project devoted to the personality of Le Corbusier was presented, for the first time all sides of his creative activity were shown in so many details as well as his influence on the culture of XX-XXI centuries. 

If one would try to find the most suitable definition for Le Corbusier’s projects in architecture, than, perhaps, the word “free” would suit best. Natural surroundings and landscape shape architectural decisions. It was not without reason that Le Corbusier used to say: “Sun, space,  air, flora, steel, concrete are materials for town development. Their significance corresponds to the order they are named in.” It is hard to overestimate Le Corbusier’s influence on the world architecture: after him free forms and spatial concepts gained popularity in many corners of the world.

Le Corbusier always showed great interest in Russia and visited the country many times at the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the1930s when he worked on designs for buildings of the Central Union of Consumer Cooperatives and Palace of the Soviets. Soviet constructivism and the creative activity of the “father of modern architecture” significantly influenced each other. The building of the Central Union of Consumer Cooperatives (later – of People's Commissariat of Consumer Goods Industry and now of the Russian Federal State Statistics Service) in Myasnitskaya street today reminds to passers-by of the rich and fruitful Moscow chapter of Le Corbusier’s life.

Guests were presented with a reprint of Sotsgorod by Nikolai Milyutin, one of the leading Soviet architectural theorists, which was translated into several languages and recognised as an important work in urban development theory.

Guests were greeted by Enver Kuzmin, CEO of RESTAVRACIA N, Andrey Movchan, Managing Partner of the Investment Company Third Rome and Maya Avelicheva, Head of AVC Charity Foundation.

Among guests there were Philippe Gens, LANIT, Pavel Nefedov, Rosbank, jeweler Dmitry Gurzhy, Sophia Trotsenko, Winzavod, Yan Yanovsky, FNSB, etc.

 

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