When in January 2012, TRACÉS published Beatriz Colomina’s article on Le Corbusier and his obsessive relationship with Eileen Grey’s villa in Cap Martin, it had the effect of an attack on the established order. Indignant letters were sent to the editorial staff and the architect’s fervent defenders demanded a right of reply. In her essay, she claimed that Le Corbusier did much more than decorate Eileen Gray’s house by painting gigantic and colorful frescoes there, against her wishes. By covering the walls of the villa, he displayed motifs from his wanderings in the brothels of Algiers. His artistic crime would have had a sexual component. Le Corbusier would have painted this house as one marks a territory, to appropriate what he considered to belong to him: the constituent principles of modernism to which the house testifies (free plan, roof terrace, long windows, free facades).
Twelve years have passed, and the world has changed a lot. The principle of a feminine rewriting of the history of art and architecture no longer outrages the Academy. Giving women a place in major narratives has become a project of the utmost importance, against which only a handful of far-right agitators still dare to protest. In the case of Eileen Gray, an early modern architect and designer, no one today disputes the legitimacy of efforts to restore her to her rightful place.
Reanimating through storytelling
E.1027, Eileen Gray and the house by the sea by Beatrice Minger and Christoph Schaub reflects this need to place the Irish architect at the heart of the story surrounding her house. It is about telling, without excess or resentment, how Le Corbusier made it an obsession, to the point of building himself a cabin right next to it, and above all of leaving his last breath there, since he drowned on the beach in front of it. Ultimately, it is a question of repairing an injustice: posterity has attributed not only the frescoes to him but, by amalgam, the house itself.
Today, no one contradicts the need to repair the injustice done to Gray, nor even the foundation which watches over the reputation of the greatest architect of the 20e century as on inheritance law. Beyond the controversy, the film above all has the capacity to reanimate this house, not only in the conflict which bruised it, but also in the momentum which gave it life. The complicity, brief as a flirtation and constant as a friendship, between the two architects who designed it: Eileen Gray and Jean Badovici.
Liens
Read the article by Beatriz Colomina: « E.1027, A house of ill-fame, a story of obsession »
Also read the review of the comic strip “Eileen Gray, a house under the sun” published in 2020: Eileen Gray in comics, Eileen Gray, A House Under the Sun (2020)
Screening – Thursday 02/27/2025, 6:30 p.m.
Cinematograph, LausanneUrban Screens 2025
E.1027, Eileen Gray and the house by the sea
-Followed by a meeting with the director Beatrice Minger
E.1027 – Eileen Gray and the house by the sea
A film by Beatrice Minger, Christoph Schaub, Documentary (CH, F, 2024, 90′), with Charles Morillon, Axel Mustache, Natalie Radmall-Quirke, Vera Flück. Distribution Film Coopi, Zurich.
Synopsis
She built herself a house. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a masterpiece.
In 1929, Irish designer and architect Eileen Gray built a refuge on the Côte d’Azur. Her first house was a masterpiece, discreet and avant-garde, which she named E.1027, an enigmatic combination of her initials and those of Jean Badovici, with whom she built it. Le Corbusier discovers the house, he is intrigued, almost obsessed. He then covered the walls with murals and published photographs of them. Gray calls these murals vandalism and calls for their removal. Ignoring his wishes, Le Corbusier built his famous Cabanon directly behind E.1027, which still dominates the history of the place today.
“E.1027” is a cinematic journey into the mind of Eileen Gray. This aesthetic docufiction traces the story of one of the world’s most influential designers and the breathtakingly beautiful house she built. A film about the power of female expression and men’s desire to control it.
