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8 Ibid. 142 9 Roth, A., Begegnung mit Pionieren (Stuttgart, 1973), 170. 10 It is striking that the schematic division of the colours that Roth used was borrowed from the scheme that Theo van Doesburg had presented in ‘De beteekenis van de kleur in binnen- en buiten-architectuur’. Le Corbusier had refused to publish this article in L’Esprit Nouveau, which Roth probably did not know at that time; see also p. 85, 86 of this book. ings for the people? Architects ought to tackle this problem in conjunction with sculptors and painters. He described the speciality of the painter as follows: ‘Colour is one of the elements of life, no less so than water or fire, a raw material just as useful as grain.’⁸ You have brought movement to your walls by means of colours, he said to the architects, but the painter is the one who truly activates them. Colour is not something superficial, but rather something that is vital. The lecture was undoubtedly a response to Le Corbusier’s Salubra collection. Le Corbusier had made use of the phrase ‘Colour is one of the elements of life, not less so than water or fire’, countersigned with the name Fernand Léger, as a slogan in the elucidation of his wallpaper collection. Léger apparently was unhappy with the association of his slogan and his name with a project in which colour was applied to an architectural project without a painter being involved. In his view, the significance that colour gained from the hand of the painter extended further than the colour keyboards of the Salubra collection. Among Léger’s audience in Zurich that day was Alfred Roth, a former member of staff of Le Corbusier, who did not agree with various standpoints of the speaker.⁹ Roth had special interest in the topic, partly due to his contact with Le Corbusier and Mondriaan. Stimulated by this lecture, he produced his own epistle entitled ‘Architektur und Malerei, Analyse der farbigen Oberflächengestaltung von Raum und Volumen’ (Architecture and Painting. Analysis of coloured surfaces of space and volumes). He was concerned with the optical effects of colour, divided into three levels of intensity: the Tone, the Colour Tone, and the Colour. To the lowest intensity level, the Tone, Roth attached the specific attention that Léger had directed toward mass-produced housing. The Tone had to be used in neutral colours to ameliorate the proportions in housing construction and workplaces. Subsequently, the Colour Tone had explicit optical properties and was capable of changing spatial proportions, particularly in combination with white and grey. According to Roth, the most important example of this could be found in the work of Le Corbusier. Finally, he regarded the three primary colours, along with white, black and grey, as used in De Stijl, as being the Colour. He referred explicitly to Mondriaan’s studio as an example of this. Roth presented his study at the fourth CIAM congress in the presence of Le Corbusier and Léger. At the same congress, in the lion’s den one might say, Léger held the same lecture as in Zurich, but now entitled ‘Discours aux architectes’. Roth had sent his text to Mondriaan for comment prior to the lecture. They spoke about it comprehensively, on several occasions. Roth never mentioned any communication with Le Corbusier on the text. The latter, who could be regarded as the tutor of Roth in modern architecture to a certain extent, must have seen this as betrayal by Roth.¹⁰ The end of 1934 witnessed the publication of the second part of Le Corbusier’s Oeuvre complète with a foreword by Sigfried Giedion. He argued that the architecture of Le Corbusier was based on the ‘Five points’, and regarded Villa Savoye (1929) as the highlight of this theory. With regard to the villas, this was also the end point, as none of the six dwelling houses that Le Corbusier built in the thirties was designed with reference to these ‘Five points’. And only one of these bore polychrome painting, namely, his own house on the rue Nungesser- 12
et-Coli. However, much use was made of the expressive character of natural materials. We also know with certainty that colour was applied in three largescale buildings that were constructed at the same time: the Clarté building in Zurich, Pavillon Suisse and the Cité de Refuge, both in Paris. In this context, one must realize that, after 1933 to 1946, Le Corbusier only realized one single building. With the exception of the relentless flow of projects and publications, his architectural practice had come almost to a halt. In a discussion with Léger and Aragon on ‘Peinture et réalité’ in 1936, Le Corbusier formulated a response to both Roth and Léger.¹¹ He was scathing about Roth’s preference for Mondriaan. ‘Perhaps the northern races – the Anglo-Saxons or the Germanic peoples – take the liberty to indulge in abstractions’, he wrote.¹² In contrast, French art is essentially concrete and realistic and forms the basis of international art. He endorsed Léger’s claim that the arts had entered a collective period, with architecture at the fore. Architecture had to be accompanied by painting and sculpture, but he assumed the primacy of architecture. It had to make demands on the other art forms so that they could be adopted into architecture in a harmonious manner. Architecture could not progress further without these, but if they wished to accompany architecture they had to take proportion, the basis of architecture, as the starting point. None the less, he was also afraid that inappropriate art would spoil the walls and, for that reason too, the artist had to follow the train of thought of the architect. He distinguished two methods of applying painting. The first was polychromy. In his view, architectural polychromy could curb confusion, create lyrical spaces, bring order, enlarge dimensions. ‘This is not yet painting. That is not necessary. This is architectonic polychromy. If a wall or part of a wall has an oppressive effect, I can break it open with a suitable colour. But, if there is scope for it, I can also ask a painter to shape his imaginative thoughts on this topic and to open the doors to the distant land of dreams in one fell swoop – and especially at those places where there is no real depth.’¹³ The second method could be applied when the architect prepared a place for the artist to introduce a lyrical touch in the whole of his architecture. With this, the possibility of deep harmony was generated, but the danger of dualism loomed. To Le Corbusier, the integration of modern architecture in large urban projects and the aim to ensure the applicability of polychromy in wallpaper for the common man were part and parcel of the same ideal. He wished to extract the relationship with painting from this process and to integrate it in a new ‘synthèse des arts’. The same book that contains the above-mentioned text by Le Corbusier also includes a text by Alberto Sartoris, ‘Colour in interior architecture’.¹⁴ Sartoris had been a member of the Movimento Italiano per l’architettura razionale since 1929, and Le Corbusier knew him from the first CIAM congress in 1928. In this text, Sartoris treated ‘colour as a vital complement of architecture; it is one of its logical and indispensable elements.’ He distinguished between a dynamic and a neo-plastic method, both of which are firmly linked to theories of architectonic functionalism. According to the dynamic method, walls that do not receive direct light ought to be painted white or given a very light colour. Walls that are half-illuminated or fully lit can be given gradually brighter colours. But every colour has to respect the wall, its form, volume and purpose. In the neo-plastic 13 11 Le Corbusier, ‘Destin de la peinture’ in La querelle de réalisme (Paris, 1936), 80 ff. Published in English as Le Corbusier, ‘The quarrel with realism, the destiny of painting’ in J.L. Martin et al., Circle, International Survey of Constructive Art (London, 1937), 67 ff. See also Le Corbusier, ‘Les tendances de l’architecture rationaliste en rapport avec la collaboration de la peinture et de la sculpture’ in L’Architecture Vivante. Le Corbusier et Pierre Jeanneret, septième série, Paris 1937, a lecture held in Rome in 1936. 12 Ibid. 70. 13 Ibid. 72-3. 14 Sartoris, A., ‘Colour in interior architecture’ in J.L. Martin et al., Circle, International Survey of Constructive Art (London, 1937), 212 ff.
Page 1 and 2: The Architectonic Colour Polychromy
Page 3 and 4: Exterior and interior 94 The associ
Page 5 and 6: chromy in Purist architecture only
Page 7 and 8: 1 Introduction The review of the ar
Page 9: 11 Fernand Léger, Pierre Jeanneret
Page 13: 15 Amédée Ozenfant, colour scheme

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