L’Esprit Nouveau

review by Le Corbusier and Dermée and Ozenfant

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June 26, 2026

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L'Esprit Nouveau was an avant-garde review founded in 1919 by painter Amédée Ozenfant and architect Le Corbusier. It served as a platform to explore contemporary art's sources and directions. Ozenfant and Le Corbusier were disillusioned with Cubism, viewing it as having become overly decorative. They co-founded the art movement known as Purism, which advocated for order, rationality, and precision, drawing aesthetic inspiration from modern technology. Their collaboration began with the book Après le Cubisme (1918) and continued through essays in L'Esprit Nouveau. Purism emphasized clean, pure forms and a limited color palette, aiming for a "symphony of consonant and architectured forms".12

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Le Corbusier
Education and early years
…founded a polemic avant-garde review, L’Esprit Nouveau. Open to the arts and humanities, with brilliant collaborators, it presented ideas in architecture and city planning already expressed by Adolf Loos and Henri van de Velde, fought against the “styles” of the past and against elaborate nonstructural decoration, and defended functionalism.
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…founded a polemic avant-garde review, L’Esprit Nouveau. Open to the arts and humanities, with brilliant collaborators, it presented ideas in architecture and city planning already expressed by Adolf Loos and Henri van de Velde, fought against the “styles” of the past and against elaborate nonstructural decoration, and defended functionalism.
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Amédée Ozenfant
…Corbusier founded the avant-garde review L’Esprit Nouveau, in which they explored the sources and directions of contemporary art. Ozenfant’s definitive work on this subject, the two-volume L’Art, was published in 1928 (translated into English as The Foundations of Modern Art in 1931). From 1931 to 1938 he painted a massive…
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…Corbusier founded the avant-garde review L’Esprit Nouveau, in which they explored the sources and directions of contemporary art. Ozenfant’s definitive work on this subject, the two-volume L’Art, was published in 1928 (translated into English as The Foundations of Modern Art in 1931). From 1931 to 1938 he painted a massive…
Read More