Purism
Formed around 1918 to express a form of art in which objects are depicted in all their potency and stripped of all frills and details to reveal their core essence. It was originally founded by Amédée Ozenfant, as a response to the Cubist fragmentation of viewpoints, with a more stable representation in the geometry of angles and shapes. Following Ozenfant’s encounter with Le Corbusier (Edouard Jeanneret), the two began to collaborate closely and wrote Après le Cubisme (After Cubism). Soon after they published L'Esprit Nouveau, which condensed their philosophy, where reality is brought down to its core and its intrinsic qualities, revealing its expressive strength in the mathematical order and where art is mainly referenced as the ‘objet-type’. Le Corbusier brought along his experience during his studies at the German Werkbund and interpreted these principles of total work of art, machine aesthetic and modernism into Purism – defining its purpose as the creation of a total work of art, including figurative arts, architecture, urban planning and applied arts. By 1920 Fernand Léger joined the movement interpreting Purism with more accent colours and contrasting features, not only in paintings but also in films such as Ballet mécanique (Mechanical Ballet).