For two years, I’ve been planning, and failing, to visit Maison La Roche, the semi-detached villa Le Corbusier and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret designed on a lot behind an elegant residential terrace in Paris. The 16th arrondissement, an appealing alternative base to the city’s chaotic centre, was Corbusier’s stamping ground. And though he cemented his presence around the southeast edge of Bois de Boulogne with three distinctive buildings during his time there, the bowed concrete home he designed for Raoul La Roche is the only one available for public viewing—and is celebrating its 100th birthday this year.

I’m glad I waited because now is the time to go. Until 8 June, the travelling art exhibition Aberto will be in residence with pieces by some 30 Brazilian artists, including Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Pape, Aluísio Carvão and Mira Schendel. Aberto was founded four years ago by Brazilian art advisor Filipe Assis, whose MO is collecting and commissioning works for display in a domestic setting. That means taking over striking homes that merit attention but won’t be overwhelmed or overshadowed by striking modern art, much of it by under-the-radar female artists. The first edition occupied Oscar Niemeyer’s Casa Niemeyer in São Paulo; this year’s is the first outside Brazil.

With its soaring void and interior promenade, Maison La Roche was always meant to double as a gallery. The financier La Roche was a zealous collector and, this being early-20th-century Paris, his collection was studded with art by France-based visionaries of the time, including Picasso, Braque, Léger, and Lipchitz.

His brief to Corbusier emphasised a two-part scheme — half private home, half public showcase — and provided the scope to implement his five new architectural tenets: free facade, free plan, long windows, garden roof and load-bearing pilotis. After La Roche’s death, the art was sent to various museums, but the architecture burnished Le Corbusier’s reputation. Maison La Roche was listed as a historic monument in 1996. Aberto provides a rare opportunity to tour it and its small garden, with generations of New World artists very much inspired by their forebears. Many of the works were commissioned specifically for the clean, windowed spaces and their palette of cognac and charron blue. Others go back as far as 1950.

Co-curated by Kiki Mazzucchelli, Claudia Moreira Salles and Lauro Cavalcanti, Aberto runs at Maison La Roche until 8 June.

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