Exhibition: “Heidi Weber, 50 years Ambassador for Le Corbusier”

August 16th- September 28th, 2008

The Heidi Weber Museum – Centre Le Corbusier in Zurich is presenting an important retrospective to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Heidi Weber’s first encounter with Le Corbusier. The exhibition is consecrated to the entire body of works of Le Corbusier (Charles Edouard Jeanneret, 1887-1965).

Encompassing more than 100 works (paintings, drawings, collages, sculptures, tapestries, furniture, plans and models), the show reveals a completely new aspect of the relationship between Heidi Weber and Le Corbusier. Organized chronologically, it conveys to the visitor the talents of a multifaceted artist, but also shows the many and varied ways that one woman’s dedication to the works of Le Corbusier during the past 50 years of her life has had an impact in many realms.

By building the “Maison d’Homme,” Le Corbusier’s last architectural work and now the “Heidi Weber Museum – Centre Le Corbusier,” Heidi Weber has furthered the goal of sharing the results of the artist’s research. The building, inaugurated in 1967, is the stage for this thorough retrospective. His ceaseless research revolved around the principle of a synthesis of arts, a harmonization between Man and his Space, Man and the Cosmos: “No sculptor stands alone, no painter is but a painter, there is no mere architect acting on his own. The creation reaches perfection in a ‘FORME UNE ,’ a completely whole form that pays homage to poetry.“*

This retrospective follows themes that are dear to Heidi Weber: the plastic arts and the architecture of the “Maison d’Homme.” First of all, we can appreciate Le Corbusier’s incomparable building—an exhibition center where space, light, polychromy, the materials and the works of art communicate harmoniously “in a relationship that is infinitely precise, just, resounding and consonant.” Forty years after its completion, this building remains an example of avant-garde architecture that is “made of materials, light and proportions, where artwork of great emotional potential, dense and strong pieces that radiate thought and emotion, may feel at ease.”

Inside, we can discover several works from Heidi Weber’s large, unparalleled collection. Pieces are on display that are hallmarks of the history of this 50th anniversary and of 20th Century art. These include Le Corbusier’s furniture, which Heidi Weber was the first to produce industrially, as well as the publication of the artist’s graphic works, completed in his lifetime at Heidi Weber’s request. Among the plastic works, we find the collage for which she traded her first car, the graphic work “L’Allégresse ,” a gift from Le Corbusier at their first meeting, the first oil painting she bought in 1958, “Verres et bouteilles (avec vermillon)” painted in 1928, the sculpture entitled “Réflection,” given by Le Corbusier to mark the organization of an exhibition, as well as the many other works closely linked with Heidi Weber. She never parted with the majority of them, such as “Les deux mouquères d’Alger” from 1939, yet others were bought back after having been sold several years earlier when she was faced with various expenses for the museum’s construction and upkeep. Throughout, Heidi Weber’s goal has been to steadfastly perpetuate the Master’s works.

Reconstructing this path of a lifetime, the exhibition underscores simultaneously and equally the different facets of a multidisciplinary creator enlightened by a new world. It also invites the observer to discover the story of a meeting, an incomparable story about art that has reverberated far beyond the borders of Europe.

Footnote:
*Reflection of Le Corbusier to Heidi Weber on the occasion of an exhibition project in 1963.

Commissionership of the exhibition:  Naïma Jornod, co-author with Jean-Pierre Jornod (Authors of the “Catalogue Raisonné de l’œuvre peint de le Corbusier,”  Skira Editions, 2005)

Catalogue of the exhibition: “Heidi Weber 50 years Ambassador for Le Corbusier,” Heidi Weber Foundation – Centre Le Corbusier Editions, 240 x 300 mm, 208 pages, black/white and color illustrations

Exhibition “Heidi Weber, 50 years Ambassador for Le Corbusier”
August 16 th—September 28th, 2008
Heidi Weber Museum – Centre Le Corbusier
Hoeschgasse 8  -  Zurich
Open on Saturdays and Sundays from 2 pm to 6 pm