Maker/Artist
Le Corbusier
Swiss architect, painter, and theorist, 1887-1965, active in France
Born 6 October 1887; died 27 August 1965. Born as Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, he adopted the pseudonym "Le Corbusier" in 1920, to be used when he was active as an architect and theorist; he used the pseudonym for his paintings from ca. 1930. It derived from his maternal grandfather's name, "Lecorbésier." He emigrated to France in 1917 and was naturalized in 1930. Born into a family of horologists and enamelers, he studied at École d'Art in Chaux-de-Fonds, but was largely self-taught in painting and architecture through study trips. In the 1920s he emerged as the most important architect of the "International Style" in France. He established the Fondation Le Corbusier in Paris to care for and make available to scholars his library, architectural drawings, sketches, and paintings.