The art movement co-founded by Le Corbusier that emphasized pure forms in painting was Purism.
Le Corbusier developed Purism with the painter Amédée Ozenfant after World War I. Their 1918 essay, “Après le Cubisme” (“After Cubism”), presented Purism as a reaction against what they viewed as Cubism’s excessive fragmentation and decorative complexity. Purist paintings favored simplified, clearly organized objects and elementary geometric forms.
The movement was not limited to painting. Through the journal L’Esprit Nouveau, published from 1920 to 1925, Le Corbusier and Ozenfant connected Purist ideas with architecture, design, technology, and modern life. Their visual language often drew on bottles, musical instruments, and other familiar objects arranged in balanced compositions.
A common mix-up is Cubism, which influenced Purism but was not the answer: Purism was explicitly formulated partly as a critique of Cubism. Le Corbusier’s later architectural work carried related preferences for order, proportion, and clear geometric form.