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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.
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| 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.
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| Giacometti |
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| Annette Giacometti 1954 |
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| 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,
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| 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.
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. 
