This article is about an art style. There is also another meaning for purism, namely linguistic purism

Linguistic purism

Linguistic purism or linguistic protectionism is the practice of defining one variety of a language as being purer than other varieties. The ideal of purity is often opposed in reference to a perceived decline from an "ideal past" or an unwanted similarity with other languages, but sometimes simply...

.

For the Spanish architecture style, see Purism (architecture)

Purism (architecture)

Purism is a historiographical term that refers to an initial phase of Renaissance architecture in Spain, which took place between 1530 and 1560, after to Isabelline Gothic and prior to the Herrerian architecture in the last third of 16th century...

Purism was a form of Cubism

Cubism

Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...

 advocated by the French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 painter

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

 Amédée Ozenfant

Amédée Ozenfant

Amédée Ozenfant was a French cubist painter.He was born into a bourgeois family in Saint-Quentin, Aisne and was educated at Dominican colleges in Saint-Sébastien...

 and the architect

Architect

An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...

 Charles-Edouard Jeanneret (Le Corbusier

Le Corbusier

Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier , was a Swiss-born French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930...

). Purism rejected the decorative trend of cubism and advocated a return to clear, ordered forms that were expressive of the modern machine age as documented in their 1918 book After Cubism.

Creation

The two artists, Jeanneret and Ozenfant, strongly objected to developments in Cubist art, particularly the decorative elements. Ozenfant and Le Corbusier wanted a return to more basic forms mainly inspired by modern machinery. To them, the golden ratio

Golden ratio

In mathematics and the arts, two quantities are in the golden ratio if the ratio of the sum of the quantities to the larger quantity is equal to the ratio of the larger quantity to the smaller one. The golden ratio is an irrational mathematical constant, approximately 1.61803398874989...

 was the ideal shape, and that is reflected in their work. The theory of Purism is expounded in the book La peinture moderne, (Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, 1925), co-written by Ozenfant and Le Corbusier and subsequently published in English as The Foundations of Modern Art.

Purist works are notable in their explicit use of geometric form and large areas of pure colour, and for their cool and detached paint surfaces - both of which prefigure the move towards the 'Hard Edge

Hard-edge painting

Hard-edge painting is painting in which abrupt transitions are found between color areas. Color areas are often of one unvarying color. The Hard-edge painting style is related to Geometric abstraction, Op Art, Post-painterly Abstraction, and Color Field painting.-History of the term:The term was...

' style in American painting, with its similar emphasis on absolute definition of form.

Le Corbusier's interest in mechanation and pure proportion persisted into his later architectural endeavours, and the Purist aesthetic as a whole can be seen to have had particular influence on the evolution of modern architecture. The Czech architect and painter Bedřich Feuerstein

Bedrich Feuerstein

Bedřich Feuerstein was a Czech architect, painter and essayist.Feuerstein was born in Dobrovice and studied at the Czech Technical University under professor Jože Plečnik. Between 1924 and 1926 he worked with Auguste Perret in Paris, and between 1929 and 1931 in Tokyo, Japan with Antonín Raymond...

 was also influenced by Purism, as were the Eesti Kunstnike Rühm (Group of Estonian Artists) in Tallinn

Tallinn

Tallinn is the capital and largest city of Estonia. It occupies an area of with a population of 414,940. It is situated on the northern coast of the country, on the banks of the Gulf of Finland, south of Helsinki, east of Stockholm and west of Saint Petersburg. Tallinn's Old Town is in the list...

, whose main members were Arnold Akberg, Mart Laarman, Henrik Olvi, and Juhan Raudsepp. Their journal, "Uue Kunsti Raamat", or "Book of New Art", which appeared in 1928, was strongly influenced by L'Esprit Nouveau and by French Purism's appeal to reason and order.
Fernand Leger also is seen to have been influenced by purism, though his style is quite different to that of Jeanneret or Ozenfant.