Charles-Édouard JEANNERET known as LE CORBUSIER (1887 - 1965) Bark, shell and flint, circa 1930-37 Washed pastel and graphite pencil on rag paper. Signed lower right. 21.5 x 30.5 cm A certificate from Mr. Eric Mouchet will be given to the buyer. In apparent contradiction to his purist work on transparent domestic utensils, such as glasses, bottles and decanters, Le Corbusier began in the mid-1920s to assemble a collection of natural objects such as bark and pebbles, or objects with a patina from their time in nature, such as bricks worn by the surf, which he called "objets à réaction poétique" (objects with a poetic reaction). This pastel is representative of the interest he developed in the 1930s. Le Corbusier's curiosity for these objects, whose beauty was not created by human hands, shows the influence that Surrealist magazines had on him. From then on, he developed a personal spirituality based on the observation of mathematical phenomena in nature - sectioning shells in Fibonacci sequences, crystals - which led him to create the Modulor in the mid-1940s, a universal method of proportioning based on the Golden Number and human proportion.