As for Mr Le Pen, the leader of the National Front, whose campaign message was a mix of crude xenophobia and anti-establishment populism, his 10.5% was for him an outright disappointment.
When the early modernist message crackled across Europe like an electric charge, Aalto was quick to enter the charmed circle that included Le Corbusier, the historian Siegfried Giedion, and artists like Hans Arp, Constantin Brancusi and Fernand Leger, whose organic abstractions were soon to influence his own use of form.