History of the Foundation
I hereby declare, in any case, to bequeath all that I possess in favor of an administrative being, the « Foundation Le Corbusier », or any other useful form, which will become a spiritual being, that is to say a continuation of the effort pursued during a lifetime.
Note of January 13, 1960.
Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, an architect still in his infancy and an artist in the making, expressed his desire very early on: “That life should have a purpose and not that life should be merely an arrow launched towards death” (letter to his parents, 1910).
Now Le Corbusier, with no direct heir and fearing that the archives and works he had carefully preserved would be dispersed after his death, he devoted the last fifteen years of his life to devising, down to the last detail, the project for a Foundation that would bear his name.
As early as 1949, in a letter to his friend Jean-Jacques Duval, for whom he built the Saint-Dié factory, he wrote:
You can kick the bucket at any time of the day. I was talking about it with my brother, who came to spend a few days here. My wife and I have made arrangements to leave what I own to the poor.
Now, what I own can be burnt paper, or better. Here, at 24 rue Nungesser et Coli (and even at 35 Sèvres in a cellar), I have a considerable and multifaceted archive: drawings, writings, notes, travel notebooks, albums, etc. It would be a shame for a fortune-teller to come across it. Some thug should not be able to come along and loot without a second thought, and cancel series that are worthwhile because they are grouped together.
In short, my archives need to be studied in order to make the most of them (to sell or to give to people, institutions or museums).
Conclusion: the purpose of this letter is to give you a heads-up and to ask you – when the time comes – to take immediate possession, i.e. control, of my archives in order to protect them from being wrongly dispersed.
And this letter, with my signature, serves as a formal document for all purposes.
With my friendship and gratitude.
Inauguration de la Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris, extrait de La Montagne, 15 novembre 1970 © FLC/ADAGP
On 3 July 1959, after several months of exchanges, Le Corbusier sent a letter to Raoul La Roche thanking him for donating his house to the future Fondation Le Corbusier.
In 1962, he was concerned about the fate of the Maison Jeanneret, also located in the Square du Docteur Blanche, which he wanted to keep associated with the Maison La Roche. Formerly occupied by his brother Albert, it was not acquired until 1970, thanks to the sale of a Picasso painting in the Fondation’s collection. It is now the headquarters of the Fondation Le Corbusier.
An intermediate stage: the association for the creation of the Foundation
The articles of association for the Fondation Le Corbusier were filed on 13 March 1963. Its aim was to “prepare the constitution of an establishment recognised as being of public utility, responsible under the name of Fondation Le Corbusier […] for collecting, conserving and developing for the benefit of the community the various elements of Le Corbusier’s work that are entrusted to it and, until such time as the foundation is created, to take its place for the accomplishment of its missions”.
Its headquarters were transferred in 1964 to the Maison La Roche, where it held its first general meeting on 6 February, three months before the final deed of transfer of the Maison La Roche to the association.
The Foundation after Le Corbusier
It was at the Fondation Salomon de Rothschild that the Foundation’s inaugural meeting was held on 10 July 1967.
In March 1968, a number of changes were made to the articles of association at the request of the Conseil d’État (mainly concerning the method of appointing directors by the three bodies: the Foundation, the Ministry of Cultural Affairs and the Association Le Corbusier, later renamed the Association des amis de Le Corbusier), with a view to obtaining recognition as a public utility. This was granted by decree on 24 July 1968; on the following 31 July, publication in the Journal Officiel definitively confirmed the birth of the Fondation Le Corbusier.