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LAURENCE AND PATRICK SEGUIN
Le Corbusier - Pierre Jeanneret: Chandigarh, India, 1951-66
Paris: Galerie Patrick Seguin, 2014
432 pages including text in French and English. Original
blue hardcover cloth-bound with white and blue
imprinting on binding and cover.
29.5 x 25 x 4.5 cm
$ 545 ‒ 815
Rs 40,000 ‒ 60,000
This lot is offered at NO RESERVE
LE CORBUSIER AND PIERRE JEANNERET
Le Corbusier was arguably the most influential architect of the 20
th
century. His cousin, Pierre Jeanneret, who worked with him
closely at various points in his career, was a gifted architect in his own right. The collaboration between Corbusier and Jeanneret
is best understood when one looks to Chandigarh, the first planned city of independent India. Prime Minister Nehru’s invitation
to Le Corbusier to design the city, as a symbol of modern India, ushered in the Modernist movement that was sweeping the
Western world.
Jeanneret’s influence is largely seen in the less prominent housing sectors of the city, the Punjab University campus, and the vast
repertoire of distinctive and uniquely modern furniture designed for the use of government officials in these buildings.
Corbusier also worked in Ahmedabad, at the invitation of several prominent families, between 1951 and 1957. Corbusier’s
wholistic view of design led him to design furniture for these buildings in Ahmedabad as well. In both Chandigarh and
Ahmedabad, the Jeanneret cousins trained local carpenters and furniture makers to achieve the finesse and attention to detail
that was essential to their design. Their chairs, tables, and desks complemented the modernist and egalitarian tenets of their
architecture, as seen in lots 81-84..
Pierre Jeanneret
Parmeshwari Lal Varma, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, 1955
158
159