OSLO.- The exhibition is being held in the Vault at the National Museum – Architecture, where lithographs from the final years of Le Corbusier’s life are on display. These works were the highlights of the major commemorative exhibition of Le Corbusier at the Museum of Decorative Arts and Design in 1966, the year after his death. These works are now being featured in an exhibition for the first time since then.

The 1966 commemoration differed greatly from the rest of the museum’s exhibition programme. For its curator, the architect and Le Corbusier expert Robert Esdaile, it was important to present Le Corbusier’s ideas in Norway. The lithographs now is being shown once again along with installation photographs, Esdaile’s correspondence, and newspaper presentations of the exhibition.

With this exhibition the National Museum is widening its focus on the links between Le Corbusier’s architecture and his visual art. While “Le Corbusier by the Sea” presented his art from the 1930s, “Le Corbusier – Lithography” concentrates on the 1950s and the 1960s. As in the former exhibition, curved shapes are recurring motifs in the architecture, sculptures, paintings and prints from this final period of his artistic life as well.

The exhibition also presents his famous chapel in Ronchamp from 1955, a building that created a scandal in the architect community. According to some critics, the erstwhile modernist Le Corbusier had now abandoned all of his principles. Asymmetry and sculptural forms typify the chapel, which was labelled “a monument for a new irrational architecture”.

The lithographs have been taken on loan from the municipality of Oslo’s art collection, and the works have recently been conserved for the exhibition.

The exhibition’s curator is Senior Curator Talette Simonsen.