Ephemera
1946 · New York
New York: Passedoit Gallery, 1946. Original. Ephemera. Fine. Single folded cream sheet with black lettering. No illus. "Catalogue" from the exhibition of March 25 through April 13, 1946 of 8 paintings by Amedee Ozenfant. All works were completed in 1945 and are listed by title, with measurements. Very scarce. "Amédée Ozenfant (15 April 1886 - 4 May 1966) was a French cubist painter and writer. In 1915, in collaboration with Max Jacob and Guillaume Apollinaire, Ozenfant founded the magazine L'Elan, which he edited until 1916, and his theories of Purism began to develop. He met the Swiss architect and painter Charles-Edouard Jeanneret (Le Corbusier) in 1917, and they jointly expounded the doctrines of Purism in their book Après le Cubisme. Its publication coincided with the first Purist exhibition, held at the Galerie Thomas in Paris in 1917, in which Ozenfant exhibited. There was a further collaboration between them on the journal L'Esprit nouveau, which was published from 1920 to 1925. A second Purist exhibition was held at the Galerie Druet, Paris, in 1921 in which Ozenfant again exhibited, and in 1924 he opened a free studio in Paris with Fernand Léger. In 1925, Ozenfant and Le Corbusier wrote La Peinture moderne, and in 1928 Ozenfant published Art. This was subsequently published in English as The Foundations of Modern Art in 1931. In this he fully expounds his theory of Purism, and it is remarkable for its idiosyncratic and aphoristic style. In the early Purist manifestos, colour was deemed secondary to form, and this could be seen in the careful placing of colour to reinforce discrete architectural elements by Le Corbusier in his work of the mid-1920s. However, by the time he was in England, Ozenfant had refined his ideas about colour and outlined many of these in the six articles on the subject that he wrote for the Architectural Review. Colour was now regarded as an essential element of architecture, rather than something considered by the architect while his work was being erected. Colour always modifies the form of the building and should receive more careful attention. (Inventory #: 155415)