In The Studio: Lisette Schumacher
With the shows and art fairs being canceled or postponed the artists' represented by Root have been working (alone) in their studios during the last few months, writing proposals, experimenting with new materials and developing new series of work.
This post gives in an insight in the latest series of Lisette Schumacher on which she has been working during the last few months; Bay Window Niche Paris and Triangular Niche Paris Molitor Building. Not all the works have been shared on our website yet. If you would like to receive a PDF with an overview of the series, don't hesitate to send us an email.
Bay Window Niche Paris
In 2019 Lisette visited Paris to continue her research into the designs of Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier. During her trip she visited the richly filled library of the Fondation Le Corbusier, where she browsed through many books and publications. Furthermore she visited the private studio apartment, the home of Le Corbusier and his wife Yvonne, located at 24 Rue Nungesser-et-Coli in the Boulogne-Billancourt quarter.
In a prominent part of the house Le Corbusier built his painting studio. In this way he could paint, draw and write at home. The dining room has a large bay window which was remodelled a few times. There was an outstanding detail that had been integrated into the window in 1949; a geometrical colourful stained-glass niche, made by Brigitte Simon, an artist from the famous dynasty of master glaziers in Reims. The niche is directly across from the marble dining table designed by Le Corbusier and surrounded by four Thonet armchairs.
The niche is a relatively square, three-dimensional cube covered with rectangular stained glass windows. The stained glass is red, yellow, blue, green, black and white. Objects related to ‘poetic reaction’ such as shells, bones and pebbles were displayed in the niche.
The niche stood out to Lisette as it was a vibrant detail in the enormous bay window with a view. The colors of the niche were alive in the quiet dining room, the object itself a strange and magical box. At first it makes you wonder what it actually is, then how it has been integrated in the window and lastly the way it functions as a tiny exhibition space; a theatre with varying performances of poetic objects.
Lisette was charmed by this ‘miniature diorama’ and decided to take the saturated colors in the niche as a starting point. She arranged the colors in six varying orders. Through painting the colors layer after layer in different sequences each sequence displays a different hue.
Lisette created a series of paintings that are an ode to the magnificent multicolored niche, presenting them as varying saturated hues in subtle gradients; varying from blue purple and red purple to yellow green.
Triangular Niche Paris Molitor Building
During her trip in 2019 Lisette visited the richly filled library of the Fondation Le Corbusier, where she browsed through many books and publications. She was allowed to see the hand-made ‘colour keyboards’ that Le Corbusier had developed to reach spatial effects by means of harmony and contrast between walls, doors and carpentry.
Furthermore she visited the private studio apartment, the home of Le Corbusier and his wife Yvonne, located at 24 Rue Nungesser-et-Coli in the Boulogne-Billancourt quarter. Here Le Corbusier developed the world’s first apartment building with a completely transparent glass façade. The building was certified a ‘Maison des Illustres’ and is a World Heritage site. On the two top floors he built his own apartment along with a painting, drawing and writing studio.
Le Corbusier integrated niches in the walls of his home. They were used to showcase objects he called his ‘objects of poetic reaction’ like shells, bones and pebbles. The exhibited objects were regularly switched. He organized exhibitions of art objects at home, like sculptures, tapestries and paintings from different eras he had collected. He built an extraordinary collection with which he liked to surround himself with and from which he drew inspiration for his own paintings.
In the living room across from the sitting area there is a niche that caught Lisette’s attention specifically through its special shape; a rectangular triangle of which the wedge sticks upwards in a long and sharp manner. She saw a picture of this niche with a Byzantine mask exhibited in it. The niches once functioned as miniature exhibition spaces; theatres with varying performances of poetic objects.
Lisette decided to take the shape of the niche as starting point to paint. Compositions of rectangular triangles arose with three dimensional clues referring to the spaciousness of the original niche.
