Giacometti Exhibition

 L'Homme Qui Marche at
the Galerie Maeght also
appeared at the LAM exhibition

I first became enchanted by the works of Alberto Giacometti when I visited friends in Vence, near Nice, in 2002. They took me to the famous Galerie Maeght which has a major Giacometti collection of 35 major sculptures, 30 drawings and nearly 100 lithographs. [The Kunsthaus in Zurich and the Giacometti Foundation in Paris also have significant collections of the artist’s work.] SO, great excitement that there has been a major exhibition of Giacometti’s work in Villeneuve d’Ascq near Lille which I was able to visit last week at L.A.M. a superb modern art gallery set in rural wooded parkland.

La Galerie Maeght

This major exhibition set his work in context with examples of work by Joan Miro and Picasso among others, and traced his artistic development from his early beginnings in Borgonuovo, Switzerland as the youngest son of Giovanni, a well-known post-Impressionist painter. He, Alberto, moved to Paris in 1922, to study under the sculptor, Antoine Bourdelle, an associate of Rodin. While there, he also experimented with Cubism and Surrealism, and was eventually regarded as one of the leading Surrealist painters. Among his associates were Miro, Picasso, Max Ernst, Hjorth and Balthus. Between 1936 and 1940 his sculpting concentrated on heads, often preferring familiar models like his sister and Isabel Delmer, a close friend. It was around this stage of his development that he began to elongate the statues of Isabel, often small, carving and reducing them to almost paper-thin proportions.

 Giacometti 

 Annette Giacometti 1954

 L'Homme  Qui Pointe  1951

In the fifties, after his marriage in Switzerland to Annette Arm, his sculptures grew larger and even thinner, but always now based on Annette, his model for the rest of his life. Perhaps his largest sculptures, were Grande Femme Debout, 1-1V, [1960] created for a major project for the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York in 1958 but he was dissatisfied with the relationship between sculptures and site and finally withdrew from the commission. His worldwide fame was firmly established in 1962 when he was awarded the Grand Prize for sculpture at the Venice Biennale and he finally visited New York in 1965 for a major exhibition of his work at the Museum of Modern Art. During the prolific fifties and sixties, in addition to his wonderful sculptures, he Paris Sans Fin, published in 1965 and for which he wrote the text as the final flourish to his artistic life.
continued to produce many, many lithographs; indeed his final work was of 150 lithographs containing memories of all the places where he had lived, all in a book,

 Roland Dumas

The Fondation Giacometti was established in 1993 by the French state after the death of Annette who had been the sole holder of his property rights. She had worked vigorously to collect a full listing of his authenticated works, gathering documentation and location of all his manufactures to counteract the rising number of counterfeited works. In a sad and scandalous coda, in 2007, Roland Dumas, former French foreign minister and executor of Annette Giacometti’s estate, was convicted, with Jacques Tajan, a leading auctioneer, of illegally selling Giacometti’s works and both had to pay the Fondation 850,000 euros.

Giacometti's art flourished despite the scandal and today his exceptional and highly individual works, particularly the famous, pared-down sculptures, are universally recognised as great art and continue to intrigue and delight new generations of admirers.