In one of the more fitting acquisitions in recent auction history, the Sydney Opera House has purchased a 1960 tapestry by Le Corbusier, a work specifically created for the Opera House, but which was never installed.
The tapestry, Les Dés Sont Jetés (The Dice Are Cast), was personally commissioned by Jorn Utzon, the Opera House’s architect, who abandoned his hard-won architectural commission after internal wrangling left him disconsolate. Utzon returned to Denmark, absent from the Opera House’s official opening in 1973, and remained absent from Australian shores thereafter.
Les Dés Sont Jetés, measuring approximately 7 x 11.5 feet, remained in Utzon’s possession, however, its orange and black abstractions gracing a wall of his home studio until his death in 2008—and finally emerging for public view at Copehnhagen’s Bruun Rasmussen Auctioneers this past June, the undisputed jewel in a collection of items from Utzon’s estate.
With the help of donations, the Sydney Opera House secured the $325,000 to purchase the tapestry—nearly three times its pre-auction estimate—welcoming Les Dés Sont Jeté to the home for which both Utzon and LeCorbusier had intended it, a half century late.
Ever beguiled by the masterwork, Utzon had written to Le Corbusier in 1960, “It has endowed our home with a beauty so exquisite that I am at a loss for the proper words to describe our feelings about it.” Sydney Opera House visitors will finally be accorded the privilege of sharing his sentiments.
