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Alberto Giacometti

Alberto Giacometti (/ˌækəˈmɛti/,[1] US also /ˌɑːk-/,[2][3][4] Italian: [alˈbɛrto dʒakoˈmetti]; 10 October 1901 – 11 January 1966) was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draftsman and printmaker. Beginning in 1922, he lived and worked mainly in Paris but regularly visited his hometown Borgonovo to see his family and work on his art.

Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti (left) with Erhard Wehrmann [de] (right) at the 31st Venice Biennale, 1962
Born(1901-10-10)10 October 1901
Died11 January 1966(1966-01-11) (aged 64)
Chur, Graubünden, Switzerland
NationalitySwiss
EducationThe School of Fine Arts, Geneva
Known forSculpture, Painting, Drawing
Notable work
MovementSurrealism, Expressionism, Cubism, Formalism
Spouse
Annette Arm
(m. 1949)
Awards"Grand Prize for Sculpture" at 1962 Venice Biennale
Websitefondation-giacometti.fr

Giacometti was one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century. His work was particularly influenced by artistic styles such as Cubism and Surrealism. Philosophical questions about the human condition, as well as existential and phenomenological debates played a significant role in his work.[5] Around 1935 he gave up on his Surrealist influences to pursue a more deepened analysis of figurative compositions. Giacometti wrote texts for periodicals and exhibition catalogues and recorded his thoughts and memories in notebooks and diaries. His critical nature led to self-doubt about his own work and his self-perceived inability to do justice to his own artistic vision. His insecurities nevertheless remained a powerful motivating artistic force throughout his entire life.[6]

Between 1938 and 1944 Giacometti's sculptures had a maximum height of seven centimeters (2.75 inches).[7] Their small size reflected the actual distance between the artist's position and his model. In this context he self-critically stated: "But wanting to create from memory what I had seen, to my terror the sculptures became smaller and smaller".[8] After World War II, Giacometti created his most famous sculptures: his extremely tall and slender figurines. These sculptures were subject to his individual viewing experience—between an imaginary yet real, a tangible yet inaccessible space.[9]

In Giacometti's whole body of work, his painting constitutes only a small part. After 1957, however, his figurative paintings were equally as present as his sculptures. The almost monochrome paintings of his late work do not refer to any other artistic styles of modernity.[10]

Early life

 
Alberto Giacometti at the 31° Venice Biennale in 1962, photographed by Paolo Monti (Fondo Paolo Monti, BEIC)

Giacometti was born in Borgonovo, Switzerland, the eldest of four children of Giovanni Giacometti, a well-known post-Impressionist painter, and Annetta Giacometti-Stampa. He was a descendant of Protestant refugees escaping the inquisition. Coming from an artistic background, he was interested in art from an early age and was encouraged by his father and godfather.[11] Alberto attended the Geneva School of Fine Arts. His brothers Diego (1902–1985) and Bruno (1907–2012) would go on to become artists and architects as well. Additionally, his cousin Zaccaria Giacometti, later professor of constitutional law and chancellor of the University of Zurich, grew up together with them, having been orphaned at the age of 12 in 1905.[12]

Career

In 1922, he moved to Paris to study under the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, an associate of Rodin. It was there that Giacometti experimented with Cubism and Surrealism and came to be regarded as one of the leading Surrealist sculptors. Among his associates were Miró, Max Ernst, Picasso, Bror Hjorth, and Balthus.

Between 1936 and 1940, Giacometti concentrated his sculpting on the human head, focusing on the sitter's gaze. He preferred models he was close to—his sister and the artist Isabel Rawsthorne (then known as Isabel Delmer).[13] This was followed by a phase in which his statues of Isabel became stretched out; her limbs elongated.[14] Obsessed with creating his sculptures exactly as he envisioned through his unique view of reality, he often carved until they were as thin as nails and reduced to the size of a pack of cigarettes, much to his consternation. A friend of his once said that if Giacometti decided to sculpt you, "he would make your head look like the blade of a knife".

During World War II, Giacometti took refuge in Switzerland. There, in 1946, he met Annette Arm, a secretary for the Red Cross. They married in 1949.[15]

After his marriage his tiny sculptures became larger, but the larger they grew, the thinner they became. For the remainder of Giacometti's life, Annette was his main female model.[15] His paintings underwent a parallel procedure. The figures appear isolated and severely attenuated, as the result of continuous reworking.

He frequently revisited his subjects: one of his favourite models was his younger brother Diego.[16]

Later years

In 1958 Giacometti was asked to create a monumental sculpture for the Chase Manhattan Bank building in New York, which was beginning construction. Although he had for many years "harbored an ambition to create work for a public square",[17] he "had never set foot in New York, and knew nothing about life in a rapidly evolving metropolis. Nor had he ever laid eyes on an actual skyscraper", according to his biographer James Lord.[18] Giacometti's work on the project resulted in the four figures of standing women—his largest sculptures—entitled Grande femme debout I through IV (1960). The commission was never completed, however, because Giacometti was unsatisfied by the relationship between the sculpture and the site, and abandoned the project.

In 1962, Giacometti was awarded the grand prize for sculpture at the Venice Biennale, and the award brought with it worldwide fame. Even when he had achieved popularity and his work was in demand, he still reworked models, often destroying them or setting them aside to be returned to years later. The prints produced by Giacometti are often overlooked but the catalogue raisonné, Giacometti – The Complete Graphics and 15 Drawings by Herbert Lust (Tudor 1970), comments on their impact and gives details of the number of copies of each print. Some of his most important images were in editions of only 30 and many were described as rare in 1970.

In his later years Giacometti's works were shown in a number of large exhibitions throughout Europe. Riding a wave of international popularity, and despite his declining health, he traveled to the United States in 1965 for an exhibition of his works at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. As his last work he prepared the text for the book Paris sans fin, a sequence of 150 lithographs containing memories of all the places where he had lived.

Death

 
100 Swiss franc banknote 1998–2019, front
 
100 Swiss franc banknote, back

Giacometti died in 1966 of heart disease (pericarditis) and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease at the Kantonsspital in Chur, Switzerland. His body was returned to his birthplace in Borgonovo, where he was interred close to his parents.

With no children, Annette Giacometti became the sole holder of his property rights.[15] She worked to collect a full listing of authenticated works by her late husband, gathering documentation on the location and manufacture of his works and working to fight the rising number of counterfeited works. When she died in 1993, the Fondation Giacometti was set up by the French state.

In May 2007 the executor of his widow's estate, former French foreign minister Roland Dumas, was convicted of illegally selling Giacometti's works to a top auctioneer, Jacques Tajan, who was also convicted. Both were ordered to pay €850,000 to the Alberto and Annette Giacometti Foundation.[19]

Artistic analysis

 
Alberto Giacometti
Photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson

Regarding Giacometti's sculptural technique and according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art: "The rough, eroded, heavily worked surfaces of Three Men Walking (II), 1949, typify his technique. Reduced, as they are, to their very core, these figures evoke lone trees in winter that have lost their foliage. Within this style, Giacometti would rarely deviate from the three themes that preoccupied him—the walking man; the standing, nude woman; and the bust—or all three, combined in various groupings."[20]

In a letter to Pierre Matisse, Giacometti wrote: "Figures were never a compact mass but like a transparent construction".[21] In the letter, Giacometti writes about how he looked back at the realist, classical busts of his youth with nostalgia, and tells the story of the existential crisis which precipitated the style he became known for.

"[I rediscovered] the wish to make compositions with figures. For this I had to make (quickly I thought; in passing), one or two studies from nature, just enough to understand the construction of a head, of a whole figure, and in 1935 I took a model. This study should take, I thought, two weeks and then I could realize my compositions...I worked with the model all day from 1935 to 1940...Nothing was as I imagined. A head, became for me an object completely unknown and without dimensions."[21]

Since Giacometti achieved exquisite realism with facility when he was executing busts in his early adolescence, Giacometti's difficulty in re-approaching the figure as an adult is generally understood as a sign of existential struggle for meaning, rather than as a technical deficit.

Giacometti was a key player in the Surrealist art movement, but his work resists easy categorization. Some describe it as formalist, others argue it is expressionist or otherwise having to do with what Deleuze calls "blocs of sensation" (as in Deleuze's analysis of Francis Bacon). Even after his excommunication from the Surrealist group, while the intention of his sculpting was usually imitation, the end products were an expression of his emotional response to the subject. He attempted to create renditions of his models the way he saw them, and the way he thought they ought to be seen. He once said that he was sculpting not the human figure but "the shadow that is cast".

Scholar William Barrett in Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (1962), argues that the attenuated forms of Giacometti's figures reflect the view of 20th century modernism and existentialism that modern life is increasingly empty and devoid of meaning. "All the sculptures of today, like those of the past, will end one day in pieces...So it is important to fashion one's work carefully in its smallest recess and charge every particle of matter with life."

A 2011–2012 exhibition at the Pinacothèque de Paris focused on showing how Giacometti was inspired by Etruscan art.[22]

Walking Man and other human figures

Giacometti is best known for the bronze sculptures of tall, thin human figures, made in the years 1945 to 1960.[23] Giacometti was influenced by the impressions he took from the people hurrying in the big city. People in motion he saw as "a succession of moments of stillness".[24]

The emaciated figures are often interpreted as an expression of the existential fear, insignificance and loneliness of mankind.[25] The mood of fear in the period of the 1940s and the Cold War is reflected in this figure. It feels sad, lonely and difficult to relate to.[26]

Legacy

Exhibitions

Giacometti's work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions including the High Museum of Art, Atlanta (1970); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2007–2008); Pushkin Museum, Moscow "The Studio of Alberto Giacometti: Collection of the Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti" (2008); Kunsthal Rotterdam (2008); Fondation Beyeler, Basel (2009); Buenos Aires (2012); Kunsthalle Hamburg (2013); Pera Museum, Istanbul (2015); Tate Modern, London (2017);[27] Vancouver Art Gallery, "Alberto Giacometti: A Line Through Time" (2019); National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin (2022).[28][29][30]

The National Portrait Gallery, London's first solo exhibition of Giacometti's work, Pure Presence opened to five star reviews on 13 October 2015 (to 10 January 2016, in honour of the fiftieth anniversary of the artist's death).[31][32] From April 2019, the Prado Museum in Madrid, has been highlighting Giacometti in an exhibition.

Public collections

Giacometti's work is displayed in numerous public collections, including:

Art foundations

The Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti, having received a bequest from Alberto Giacometti's widow Annette, holds a collection of circa 5,000 works, frequently displayed around the world through exhibitions and long-term loans. A public interest institution, the Foundation was created in 2003 and aims at promoting, disseminating, preserving and protecting Alberto Giacometti's work.

The Alberto-Giacometti-Stiftung[36] established in Zürich in 1965, holds a smaller collection of works acquired from the collection of the Pittsburgh industrialist G. David Thompson.

Notable sales

According to record Giacometti has sold the two most expensive sculptures in history.

In November 2000 a Giacometti bronze, Grande Femme Debout I, sold for $14.3 million.[37] Grande Femme Debout II was bought by the Gagosian Gallery for $27.4 million at Christie's auction in New York City on 6 May 2008.[38]

L'Homme qui marche I, a life-sized bronze sculpture of a man, became one of the most expensive works of art, and at the time was the most expensive sculpture ever sold at auction. It was in February 2010, when it sold for £65 million (US$104.3 million) at Sotheby's, London.[39][40] Grande tête mince, a large bronze bust, sold for $53.3 million just three months later.

L'Homme au doigt (Pointing Man) sold for $126 million (£81,314,455.32), or $141.3 million with fees, in Christie's May 2015, "Looking Forward to the Past" sale in New York City. The work had been in the same private collection for 45 years.[41] As of now it is the most expensive sculpture sold at auction.

After being showcased on the BBC programme Fake or Fortune, a plaster sculpture, titled Gazing Head, sold in 2019 for half a million pounds.[42]

In April 2021, Giacometti's small-scale bronze sculpture, Nu debout II (1953), was sold from a Japanese private collection and went for £1.5 million ($2 million), against an estimate of £800,000 ($1.1 million).[43]

Other legacy

Giacometti created the monument on the grave of Gerda Taro at Père Lachaise Cemetery.[44]

In 2001 he was included in the Painting the Century: 101 Portrait Masterpieces 1900–2000 exhibition held at the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Giacometti and his sculpture L'Homme qui marche I appear on the former 100 Swiss franc banknote.[45]

According to a lecture by Michael Peppiatt at Cambridge University on 8 July 2010, Giacometti, who had a friendship with author/playwright Samuel Beckett, created a tree for the set of a 1961 Paris production of Waiting for Godot.

The 2017 movie Final Portrait retells the story of his friendship with the biographer James Lord. Giacometti is played by Geoffrey Rush.

References

Citations

  1. ^ . Lexico UK English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 20 March 2022.
  2. ^ "Giacometti". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.). HarperCollins. Retrieved 28 July 2019.
  3. ^ "Giacometti". Collins English Dictionary. HarperCollins. Retrieved 28 July 2019.
  4. ^ "Giacometti". Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Retrieved 28 July 2019.
  5. ^ Gerber, Louis (8 September 2001). "Alberto Giacometti". www.cosmopolis.ch. Retrieved 1 February 2018.
  6. ^ Fondation Beyeler. The Collection. Ed. by Vischer, Theodora, Fondation Beyeler, Riehen / Basel. ISBN 9783775743334. OCLC 1010067077.
  7. ^ Angela Schneider: Wie aus weiter Ferne. Konstanten im Werk Giacomettis, in: Angela Schneider: Giacometti. p. 71
  8. ^ Letter to Pierre Matisse, 1947. In: Exhibition of Sculptures, Paintings, Drawings, exh. cat. Pierre Matisse Gallery (New York, 1948), pp. 29.
  9. ^ Reinhold Hohl: Lebenschronik. In: Angela Schneider: Giacometti, p. 26
  10. ^ Lucius Grisebach: Die Malerei, in: Angela Schneider: Giacometti, p. 82
  11. ^ "Alberto Giacometti | Swiss sculptor and painter | Britannica". www.britannica.com.
  12. ^ Andreas Kley: Von Stampa nach Zürich. Der Staatsrechtler Zaccaria Giacometti, sein Leben und Werk und seine Bergeller Künstlerfamilie, Zürich 2014, pp. 89 et seq.
  13. ^ "Jacobi, Carol. Out of the Cage: The Art of Isabel Rawsthorne, London: The Estate of Francis Bacon Publishing, Feb 2021".
  14. ^ Kino, Carol (20 November 2005). "Real Women Have Curves - The New York Times". The New York Times. Retrieved 16 September 2019.
  15. ^ a b c Giacometti, Fondation. "Fondation Giacometti - TRIBUTE TO ANNETTE GIACOMETTI". www.fondation-giacometti.fr. Retrieved 16 September 2019.
  16. ^ Tate Collection: Seated Man by Alberto Giacometti Retrieved 13 July 2007.
  17. ^ "Christies - Page Not Found". www.christies.com. Retrieved 16 September 2019. {{cite web}}: Cite uses generic title (help)
  18. ^ James Lord, Giacometti: A Biography, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1986, pp. 331–332 ISBN 978-0-374-52525-5
  19. ^ "Conviction Upheld Against former French FM in Giacometti Fraud". 10 May 2007. Retrieved 16 April 2008.
  20. ^ "Metropolitan Museum of Art".
  21. ^ a b "Alberto Giacometti" (PDF) (Press release). Garden City, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, in collaboration with the Art Institute of Chicago. 1965. pp. 14–28.
  22. ^ "Pinacothèque de Paris – Site officiel de la Pinacothèque de Paris". Retrieved 16 September 2019.
  23. ^ Feigel, Lara (21 April 2017). "On the edge of madness: the terrors and genius of Alberto Giacometti". theguardian. Retrieved 5 January 2021.
  24. ^ "ALBERTO GIACOMETTI FONDS HÉLÈNE & EDOUARD LECLERC". Fondation-giacometti.
  25. ^ "Walking Man". aaronartprints. Retrieved 5 January 2021.
  26. ^ Sidelnikova, Anna. "Walking man II". Arthive.com.
  27. ^ ""Alberto Giacometti - press release". Tate. Retrieved 16 March 2022.
  28. ^ "Alberto Giacometti: A line through time: June 16, 2019 - September 29, 2019". Vancouver Art Gallery. Retrieved 16 September 2019.
  29. ^ O’Sullivan, Des (16 April 2022). "Giacometti at the National Gallery is a must-see". Irish Examiner.
  30. ^ McCormick, Penny (8 April 2022). "All You Need To Know About The New Giacometti Exhibition". The Gloss Magazine.
  31. ^ Jones, Jonathan (13 October 2015). "Giacometti: Pure Presence review – the most profound, universal art of the past 75 years". Guardian online. Retrieved 13 October 2015.
  32. ^ Luke, Ben (13 October 2015). "Giacometti: Pure Presence, exhibition review: Profound portrait of the artist's progress". Evening Standard online. Retrieved 13 October 2015.
  33. ^ "Exhibition". leeum.samsungfoundation.org. Retrieved 16 September 2019.
  34. ^ "Search – Permanent Collection – NCMA – North Carolina Museum of Art". ncartmuseum.org. Retrieved 3 February 2017.
  35. ^ "ALBERTO GIACOMETTI: A LINE THROUGH TIME". Vanartgallery. 2019.
  36. ^ "Alberto Giacometti Stiftung: root". www.giacometti-stiftung.ch. Retrieved 16 September 2019.
  37. ^ "Art record Picasso painting goes for £39m at auction". The Guardian. London. 10 November 2000. Retrieved 23 April 2010.
  38. ^ . Archived from the original on 12 May 2008. Retrieved 16 September 2019.
  39. ^ "Sculpture fetches £65m at auction". 5 February 2010. Retrieved 16 September 2019 – via news.bbc.co.uk.
  40. ^ "Alberto Giacometti's Walking Man I Sells for a Record-Breaking $104,327,006 at Sotheby's". artdaily.com. Retrieved 16 September 2019.
  41. ^ Reyburn, Scott (11 May 2015). "Two Artworks Top $100 Million Each at Christie's Sale (Artsbeat blog)". New York Times. Retrieved 12 May 2015.
  42. ^ Alberge, Dalya (23 August 2019). "'Worthless' sculpture from BBC's Fake or Fortune proves to be authentic Giacometti worth more than £500,000". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 12 January 2022. Retrieved 16 September 2019 – via www.telegraph.co.uk.
  43. ^ Villa, Angelica (15 April 2021). "$34.2 M. Phillips London Sale Brings Tunji Adeniyi-Jones Record and Air of Optimism". ARTnews.com. Retrieved 17 April 2021.
  44. ^ Robert Whelan, "Robert Capa, the definitive collection", p. 8, Phaidon press 2001, ISBN 978-0-7148-4449-7
  45. ^ . Archived from the original on 27 January 2010. Retrieved 16 September 2019.

General sources

  • Jacques Dupin (1962). Alberto Giacometti, Paris, Maeght
  • Reinhold Hohl (1971). Alberto Giacometti, Stuttgart: Gerd Hatje
  • Die Sammlung der Alberto Giacometti-Stiftung (1990), Zürich, Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft
  • Alberto Giacometti (1991–92). Sculptures – peintures – dessins. Paris, Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris,.
  • Jean Soldini (1993). Alberto Giacometti. Le colossal, la mère, le sacré, Lausanne, L'Age d'Homme
  • David Sylvester (1996) Looking at Giacometti, Henry Holt & Co.
  • Alberto Giacometti 1901–1966. Kunsthalle Wien, 1996
  • James Lord (1997). Giacometti: A Biography, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
  • Alberto Giacometti. Kunsthaus Zürich, 2001. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2001–2002.
  • Yves Bonnefoy (2006). Alberto Giacometti: A Biography of His Work, New edition, Flammarion
  • Weiland, Andreas (25 January 2009). . Art in Society. ISSN 1618-2154. Archived from the original on 27 May 2013.
  • Wilson, Laurie (2003). . Yale University Press. ISBN 0300090374. Archived from the original on 14 September 2006.

Further reading

  • Alberto Giacometti. L'espace et la force, Jean Soldini, Kimé (2016).
  • Alberto Giacometti, Yves Bonnefoy, Assouline Publishing (22 February 2011)
  • In Giacometti's Studio, Michael Peppiatt, Yale University Press (14 December 2010)
  • Alberto Giacometti: A Biography of His Work, Yves Bonnefoy, New edition, Flammarion (2006)
  • Giacometti: A Biography, James Lord, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (1997)
  • Looking at Giacometti, David Sylvester, Henry Holt & Co. (1996)
  • Alberto Giacometti, Herbert Matter & Mercedes Matter, Harry N Abrams (September 1987)
  • A Giacometti Portrait, James Lord, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (1 July 1980)
  • Alberto Giacometti, Reinhold Hohl, H. N. Abrams (1972)
  • Alberto Giacometti, Reinhold Hohl, Stuttgart: Gerd Hatje (1971)
  • Alberto Giacometti, Jacques Dupin, Paris, Maeght (1962)
  • The Studio of Alberto Giacometti: Collection of the Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti, Véronique Wiesinger (ed.), exh. cat., Paris: Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti/Centre Pompidou (2007) ISBN 978-2-84426-352-0
  • "The Dream, the Sphinx, and the Death of T", Alberto Giacometti, X magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1 (November 1959); An Anthology from X (Oxford University Press 1988).
  • Jacobi, Carol. Out of the Cage: The Art of Isabel Rawsthorne, London: The Estate of Francis Bacon Publishing, Feb 2021 ISBN 978-0-50097-105-5
  • Matter, Mercedes (28 January 1966). "A Life Spent in Pursuit of the Impossible". LIFE. Vol. 60, no. 4. pp. 54–60. ISSN 0024-3019.
  • The Cube and the Face: Around a Sculpture by Alberto Giacometti, Didi-Huberman, Georges (2015).

External links

  • The Alberto et Annette Giacometti Foundation website
  • "Alberto Giacometti". SIKART Lexicon on art in Switzerland.
  • Publications by and about Alberto Giacometti in the catalogue Helveticat of the Swiss National Library
  • Works of Alberto Giacometti:
    • The UNESCO Works of Art Collection
    • Alberto Giacometti at the Museum of Modern Art
    • smARThistory: Giacometti's City Square
  • Life of Alberto Giacometti:
    • Chronology of his life with illustrations from the Museum of Modern Art
  • Alberto Giacometti in the National Gallery of Australia's Kenneth Tyler Collection
  • in American public collections, on the French Sculpture Census website  

alberto, giacometti, giacometti, redirects, here, other, people, named, giacometti, giacometti, surname, racehorse, giacometti, horse, also, ɑː, italian, alˈbɛrto, dʒakoˈmetti, october, 1901, january, 1966, swiss, sculptor, painter, draftsman, printmaker, begi. Giacometti redirects here For other people named Giacometti see Giacometti surname For the racehorse see Giacometti horse Alberto Giacometti ˌ dʒ ae k e ˈ m ɛ t i 1 US also ˌ dʒ ɑː k 2 3 4 Italian alˈbɛrto dʒakoˈmetti 10 October 1901 11 January 1966 was a Swiss sculptor painter draftsman and printmaker Beginning in 1922 he lived and worked mainly in Paris but regularly visited his hometown Borgonovo to see his family and work on his art Alberto GiacomettiAlberto Giacometti left with Erhard Wehrmann de right at the 31st Venice Biennale 1962Born 1901 10 10 10 October 1901Borgonovo Stampa Graubunden SwitzerlandDied11 January 1966 1966 01 11 aged 64 Chur Graubunden SwitzerlandNationalitySwissEducationThe School of Fine Arts GenevaKnown forSculpture Painting DrawingNotable workTete qui regarde The Palace at 4 a m L Homme au doigt Grande tete mince Large Standing Woman I Monumental Head L Homme qui marche IMovementSurrealism Expressionism Cubism FormalismSpouseAnnette Arm m 1949 wbr Awards Grand Prize for Sculpture at 1962 Venice BiennaleWebsitefondation giacometti wbr frGiacometti was one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century His work was particularly influenced by artistic styles such as Cubism and Surrealism Philosophical questions about the human condition as well as existential and phenomenological debates played a significant role in his work 5 Around 1935 he gave up on his Surrealist influences to pursue a more deepened analysis of figurative compositions Giacometti wrote texts for periodicals and exhibition catalogues and recorded his thoughts and memories in notebooks and diaries His critical nature led to self doubt about his own work and his self perceived inability to do justice to his own artistic vision His insecurities nevertheless remained a powerful motivating artistic force throughout his entire life 6 Between 1938 and 1944 Giacometti s sculptures had a maximum height of seven centimeters 2 75 inches 7 Their small size reflected the actual distance between the artist s position and his model In this context he self critically stated But wanting to create from memory what I had seen to my terror the sculptures became smaller and smaller 8 After World War II Giacometti created his most famous sculptures his extremely tall and slender figurines These sculptures were subject to his individual viewing experience between an imaginary yet real a tangible yet inaccessible space 9 In Giacometti s whole body of work his painting constitutes only a small part After 1957 however his figurative paintings were equally as present as his sculptures The almost monochrome paintings of his late work do not refer to any other artistic styles of modernity 10 Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 3 Later years 4 Death 5 Artistic analysis 5 1 Walking Man and other human figures 6 Legacy 6 1 Exhibitions 6 2 Public collections 6 3 Art foundations 6 4 Notable sales 6 5 Other legacy 7 References 7 1 Citations 7 2 General sources 8 Further reading 9 External linksEarly life Edit Alberto Giacometti at the 31 Venice Biennale in 1962 photographed by Paolo Monti Fondo Paolo Monti BEIC Giacometti was born in Borgonovo Switzerland the eldest of four children of Giovanni Giacometti a well known post Impressionist painter and Annetta Giacometti Stampa He was a descendant of Protestant refugees escaping the inquisition Coming from an artistic background he was interested in art from an early age and was encouraged by his father and godfather 11 Alberto attended the Geneva School of Fine Arts His brothers Diego 1902 1985 and Bruno 1907 2012 would go on to become artists and architects as well Additionally his cousin Zaccaria Giacometti later professor of constitutional law and chancellor of the University of Zurich grew up together with them having been orphaned at the age of 12 in 1905 12 Career EditIn 1922 he moved to Paris to study under the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle an associate of Rodin It was there that Giacometti experimented with Cubism and Surrealism and came to be regarded as one of the leading Surrealist sculptors Among his associates were Miro Max Ernst Picasso Bror Hjorth and Balthus Between 1936 and 1940 Giacometti concentrated his sculpting on the human head focusing on the sitter s gaze He preferred models he was close to his sister and the artist Isabel Rawsthorne then known as Isabel Delmer 13 This was followed by a phase in which his statues of Isabel became stretched out her limbs elongated 14 Obsessed with creating his sculptures exactly as he envisioned through his unique view of reality he often carved until they were as thin as nails and reduced to the size of a pack of cigarettes much to his consternation A friend of his once said that if Giacometti decided to sculpt you he would make your head look like the blade of a knife During World War II Giacometti took refuge in Switzerland There in 1946 he met Annette Arm a secretary for the Red Cross They married in 1949 15 After his marriage his tiny sculptures became larger but the larger they grew the thinner they became For the remainder of Giacometti s life Annette was his main female model 15 His paintings underwent a parallel procedure The figures appear isolated and severely attenuated as the result of continuous reworking He frequently revisited his subjects one of his favourite models was his younger brother Diego 16 Later years Edit Cat 1954 Metropolitan Museum of Art In 1958 Giacometti was asked to create a monumental sculpture for the Chase Manhattan Bank building in New York which was beginning construction Although he had for many years harbored an ambition to create work for a public square 17 he had never set foot in New York and knew nothing about life in a rapidly evolving metropolis Nor had he ever laid eyes on an actual skyscraper according to his biographer James Lord 18 Giacometti s work on the project resulted in the four figures of standing women his largest sculptures entitled Grande femme debout I through IV 1960 The commission was never completed however because Giacometti was unsatisfied by the relationship between the sculpture and the site and abandoned the project In 1962 Giacometti was awarded the grand prize for sculpture at the Venice Biennale and the award brought with it worldwide fame Even when he had achieved popularity and his work was in demand he still reworked models often destroying them or setting them aside to be returned to years later The prints produced by Giacometti are often overlooked but the catalogue raisonne Giacometti The Complete Graphics and 15 Drawings by Herbert Lust Tudor 1970 comments on their impact and gives details of the number of copies of each print Some of his most important images were in editions of only 30 and many were described as rare in 1970 In his later years Giacometti s works were shown in a number of large exhibitions throughout Europe Riding a wave of international popularity and despite his declining health he traveled to the United States in 1965 for an exhibition of his works at the Museum of Modern Art in New York As his last work he prepared the text for the book Paris sans fin a sequence of 150 lithographs containing memories of all the places where he had lived Death Edit 100 Swiss franc banknote 1998 2019 front 100 Swiss franc banknote back Giacometti died in 1966 of heart disease pericarditis and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease at the Kantonsspital in Chur Switzerland His body was returned to his birthplace in Borgonovo where he was interred close to his parents With no children Annette Giacometti became the sole holder of his property rights 15 She worked to collect a full listing of authenticated works by her late husband gathering documentation on the location and manufacture of his works and working to fight the rising number of counterfeited works When she died in 1993 the Fondation Giacometti was set up by the French state In May 2007 the executor of his widow s estate former French foreign minister Roland Dumas was convicted of illegally selling Giacometti s works to a top auctioneer Jacques Tajan who was also convicted Both were ordered to pay 850 000 to the Alberto and Annette Giacometti Foundation 19 Artistic analysis Edit Alberto GiacomettiPhoto by Henri Cartier Bresson Regarding Giacometti s sculptural technique and according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art The rough eroded heavily worked surfaces of Three Men Walking II 1949 typify his technique Reduced as they are to their very core these figures evoke lone trees in winter that have lost their foliage Within this style Giacometti would rarely deviate from the three themes that preoccupied him the walking man the standing nude woman and the bust or all three combined in various groupings 20 In a letter to Pierre Matisse Giacometti wrote Figures were never a compact mass but like a transparent construction 21 In the letter Giacometti writes about how he looked back at the realist classical busts of his youth with nostalgia and tells the story of the existential crisis which precipitated the style he became known for I rediscovered the wish to make compositions with figures For this I had to make quickly I thought in passing one or two studies from nature just enough to understand the construction of a head of a whole figure and in 1935 I took a model This study should take I thought two weeks and then I could realize my compositions I worked with the model all day from 1935 to 1940 Nothing was as I imagined A head became for me an object completely unknown and without dimensions 21 Since Giacometti achieved exquisite realism with facility when he was executing busts in his early adolescence Giacometti s difficulty in re approaching the figure as an adult is generally understood as a sign of existential struggle for meaning rather than as a technical deficit Giacometti was a key player in the Surrealist art movement but his work resists easy categorization Some describe it as formalist others argue it is expressionist or otherwise having to do with what Deleuze calls blocs of sensation as in Deleuze s analysis of Francis Bacon Even after his excommunication from the Surrealist group while the intention of his sculpting was usually imitation the end products were an expression of his emotional response to the subject He attempted to create renditions of his models the way he saw them and the way he thought they ought to be seen He once said that he was sculpting not the human figure but the shadow that is cast Scholar William Barrett in Irrational Man A Study in Existential Philosophy 1962 argues that the attenuated forms of Giacometti s figures reflect the view of 20th century modernism and existentialism that modern life is increasingly empty and devoid of meaning All the sculptures of today like those of the past will end one day in pieces So it is important to fashion one s work carefully in its smallest recess and charge every particle of matter with life A 2011 2012 exhibition at the Pinacotheque de Paris focused on showing how Giacometti was inspired by Etruscan art 22 Artworks by Giacometti at the 31st Venice Biennale in 1962 photographed by Paolo Monti Walking Man and other human figures Edit Giacometti is best known for the bronze sculptures of tall thin human figures made in the years 1945 to 1960 23 Giacometti was influenced by the impressions he took from the people hurrying in the big city People in motion he saw as a succession of moments of stillness 24 The emaciated figures are often interpreted as an expression of the existential fear insignificance and loneliness of mankind 25 The mood of fear in the period of the 1940s and the Cold War is reflected in this figure It feels sad lonely and difficult to relate to 26 Legacy EditExhibitions Edit Giacometti s work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions including the High Museum of Art Atlanta 1970 Centre Pompidou Paris 2007 2008 Pushkin Museum Moscow The Studio of Alberto Giacometti Collection of the Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti 2008 Kunsthal Rotterdam 2008 Fondation Beyeler Basel 2009 Buenos Aires 2012 Kunsthalle Hamburg 2013 Pera Museum Istanbul 2015 Tate Modern London 2017 27 Vancouver Art Gallery Alberto Giacometti A Line Through Time 2019 National Gallery of Ireland Dublin 2022 28 29 30 The National Portrait Gallery London s first solo exhibition of Giacometti s work Pure Presence opened to five star reviews on 13 October 2015 to 10 January 2016 in honour of the fiftieth anniversary of the artist s death 31 32 From April 2019 the Prado Museum in Madrid has been highlighting Giacometti in an exhibition Public collections Edit Giacometti s work is displayed in numerous public collections including Albright Knox Art Gallery Buffalo Art Institute of Chicago Baltimore Museum of Art Baltimore Maryland Bechtler Museum of Modern Art Charlotte North Carolina Berggruen Museum Berlin Botero Museum Bogota Colombia Bundner Kunstmuseum Chur Switzerland Carnegie Museum of Art Pittsburgh Detroit Institute of Arts Fondation Beyeler Basel Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Washington D C J Paul Getty Museum Los Angeles California Johnson Museum of Art Cornell University Kunsthaus Zurich Kunstmuseum Basel Leeum Samsung Museum of Art South Korea 33 Los Angeles County Museum of Art Louisiana Museum of Modern Art Denmark Minneapolis Institute of Art Museum of Modern Art New York Museum of Fine Arts Boston National Gallery of Art Washington D C National Gallery of Canada Ottawa North Carolina Museum of Art Raleigh North Carolina 34 Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts University of East Anglia Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art Scottsdale Arizona Solomon R Guggenheim Museum New York Tate London Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art Iran University of Michigan Museum of Art Wadsworth Atheneum Hartford Walker Art Center Minneapolis Vancouver Art Gallery 35 Art foundations Edit The Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti having received a bequest from Alberto Giacometti s widow Annette holds a collection of circa 5 000 works frequently displayed around the world through exhibitions and long term loans A public interest institution the Foundation was created in 2003 and aims at promoting disseminating preserving and protecting Alberto Giacometti s work The Alberto Giacometti Stiftung 36 established in Zurich in 1965 holds a smaller collection of works acquired from the collection of the Pittsburgh industrialist G David Thompson Notable sales Edit According to record Giacometti has sold the two most expensive sculptures in history In November 2000 a Giacometti bronze Grande Femme Debout I sold for 14 3 million 37 Grande Femme Debout II was bought by the Gagosian Gallery for 27 4 million at Christie s auction in New York City on 6 May 2008 38 L Homme qui marche I a life sized bronze sculpture of a man became one of the most expensive works of art and at the time was the most expensive sculpture ever sold at auction It was in February 2010 when it sold for 65 million US 104 3 million at Sotheby s London 39 40 Grande tete mince a large bronze bust sold for 53 3 million just three months later L Homme au doigt Pointing Man sold for 126 million 81 314 455 32 or 141 3 million with fees in Christie s May 2015 Looking Forward to the Past sale in New York City The work had been in the same private collection for 45 years 41 As of now it is the most expensive sculpture sold at auction After being showcased on the BBC programme Fake or Fortune a plaster sculpture titled Gazing Head sold in 2019 for half a million pounds 42 In April 2021 Giacometti s small scale bronze sculpture Nu debout II 1953 was sold from a Japanese private collection and went for 1 5 million 2 million against an estimate of 800 000 1 1 million 43 Other legacy Edit Giacometti created the monument on the grave of Gerda Taro at Pere Lachaise Cemetery 44 In 2001 he was included in the Painting the Century 101 Portrait Masterpieces 1900 2000 exhibition held at the National Portrait Gallery London Giacometti and his sculpture L Homme qui marche I appear on the former 100 Swiss franc banknote 45 According to a lecture by Michael Peppiatt at Cambridge University on 8 July 2010 Giacometti who had a friendship with author playwright Samuel Beckett created a tree for the set of a 1961 Paris production of Waiting for Godot The 2017 movie Final Portrait retells the story of his friendship with the biographer James Lord Giacometti is played by Geoffrey Rush References EditCitations Edit Giacometti Alberto Lexico UK English Dictionary Oxford University Press Archived from the original on 20 March 2022 Giacometti The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language 5th ed HarperCollins Retrieved 28 July 2019 Giacometti Collins English Dictionary HarperCollins Retrieved 28 July 2019 Giacometti Merriam Webster Dictionary Retrieved 28 July 2019 Gerber Louis 8 September 2001 Alberto Giacometti www cosmopolis ch Retrieved 1 February 2018 Fondation Beyeler The Collection Ed by Vischer Theodora Fondation Beyeler Riehen Basel ISBN 9783775743334 OCLC 1010067077 Angela Schneider Wie aus weiter Ferne Konstanten im Werk Giacomettis in Angela Schneider Giacometti p 71 Letter to Pierre Matisse 1947 In Exhibition of Sculptures Paintings Drawings exh cat Pierre Matisse Gallery New York 1948 pp 29 Reinhold Hohl Lebenschronik In Angela Schneider Giacometti p 26 Lucius Grisebach Die Malerei in Angela Schneider Giacometti p 82 Alberto Giacometti Swiss sculptor and painter Britannica www britannica com Andreas Kley Von Stampa nach Zurich Der Staatsrechtler Zaccaria Giacometti sein Leben und Werk und seine Bergeller Kunstlerfamilie Zurich 2014 pp 89 et seq Jacobi Carol Out of the Cage The Art of Isabel Rawsthorne London The Estate of Francis Bacon Publishing Feb 2021 Kino Carol 20 November 2005 Real Women Have Curves The New York Times The New York Times Retrieved 16 September 2019 a b c Giacometti Fondation Fondation Giacometti TRIBUTE TO ANNETTE GIACOMETTI www fondation giacometti fr Retrieved 16 September 2019 Tate Collection Seated Man by Alberto Giacometti Retrieved 13 July 2007 Christies Page Not Found www christies com Retrieved 16 September 2019 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a Cite uses generic title help James Lord Giacometti A Biography Farrar Straus and Giroux New York 1986 pp 331 332 ISBN 978 0 374 52525 5 Conviction Upheld Against former French FM in Giacometti Fraud 10 May 2007 Retrieved 16 April 2008 Metropolitan Museum of Art a b Alberto Giacometti PDF Press release Garden City New York The Museum of Modern Art in collaboration with the Art Institute of Chicago 1965 pp 14 28 Pinacotheque de Paris Site officiel de la Pinacotheque de Paris Retrieved 16 September 2019 Feigel Lara 21 April 2017 On the edge of madness the terrors and genius of Alberto Giacometti theguardian Retrieved 5 January 2021 ALBERTO GIACOMETTI FONDS HELENE amp EDOUARD LECLERC Fondation giacometti Walking Man aaronartprints Retrieved 5 January 2021 Sidelnikova Anna Walking man II Arthive com Alberto Giacometti press release Tate Retrieved 16 March 2022 Alberto Giacometti A line through time June 16 2019 September 29 2019 Vancouver Art Gallery Retrieved 16 September 2019 O Sullivan Des 16 April 2022 Giacometti at the National Gallery is a must see Irish Examiner McCormick Penny 8 April 2022 All You Need To Know About The New Giacometti Exhibition The Gloss Magazine Jones Jonathan 13 October 2015 Giacometti Pure Presence review the most profound universal art of the past 75 years Guardian online Retrieved 13 October 2015 Luke Ben 13 October 2015 Giacometti Pure Presence exhibition review Profound portrait of the artist s progress Evening Standard online Retrieved 13 October 2015 Exhibition leeum samsungfoundation org Retrieved 16 September 2019 Search Permanent Collection NCMA North Carolina Museum of Art ncartmuseum org Retrieved 3 February 2017 ALBERTO GIACOMETTI A LINE THROUGH TIME Vanartgallery 2019 Alberto Giacometti Stiftung root www giacometti stiftung ch Retrieved 16 September 2019 Art record Picasso painting goes for 39m at auction The Guardian London 10 November 2000 Retrieved 23 April 2010 Afp google com Monet fetches record price at New York auction Archived from the original on 12 May 2008 Retrieved 16 September 2019 Sculpture fetches 65m at auction 5 February 2010 Retrieved 16 September 2019 via news bbc co uk Alberto Giacometti s Walking Man I Sells for a Record Breaking 104 327 006 at Sotheby s artdaily com Retrieved 16 September 2019 Reyburn Scott 11 May 2015 Two Artworks Top 100 Million Each at Christie s Sale Artsbeat blog New York Times Retrieved 12 May 2015 Alberge Dalya 23 August 2019 Worthless sculpture from BBC s Fake or Fortune proves to be authentic Giacometti worth more than 500 000 The Telegraph Archived from the original on 12 January 2022 Retrieved 16 September 2019 via www telegraph co uk Villa Angelica 15 April 2021 34 2 M Phillips London Sale Brings Tunji Adeniyi Jones Record and Air of Optimism ARTnews com Retrieved 17 April 2021 Robert Whelan Robert Capa the definitive collection p 8 Phaidon press 2001 ISBN 978 0 7148 4449 7 Schweizer Nationalbank Archived from the original on 27 January 2010 Retrieved 16 September 2019 General sources Edit Jacques Dupin 1962 Alberto Giacometti Paris Maeght Reinhold Hohl 1971 Alberto Giacometti Stuttgart Gerd Hatje Die Sammlung der Alberto Giacometti Stiftung 1990 Zurich Zurcher Kunstgesellschaft Alberto Giacometti 1991 92 Sculptures peintures dessins Paris Musee d art moderne de la Ville de Paris Jean Soldini 1993 Alberto Giacometti Le colossal la mere le sacre Lausanne L Age d Homme David Sylvester 1996 Looking at Giacometti Henry Holt amp Co Alberto Giacometti 1901 1966 Kunsthalle Wien 1996 James Lord 1997 Giacometti A Biography Farrar Straus and Giroux Alberto Giacometti Kunsthaus Zurich 2001 New York The Museum of Modern Art 2001 2002 Yves Bonnefoy 2006 Alberto Giacometti A Biography of His Work New edition Flammarion Weiland Andreas 25 January 2009 The Sculptures of Alberto Giacometti Seen in the Kunsthal Rotterdam Giacometti Exhibition October 18 2008 February 8 2009 Art in Society ISSN 1618 2154 Archived from the original on 27 May 2013 Wilson Laurie 2003 Alberto Giacometti Myth Magic and the Man Yale University Press ISBN 0300090374 Archived from the original on 14 September 2006 Further reading EditAlberto Giacometti L espace et la force Jean Soldini Kime 2016 Alberto Giacometti Yves Bonnefoy Assouline Publishing 22 February 2011 In Giacometti s Studio Michael Peppiatt Yale University Press 14 December 2010 Alberto Giacometti A Biography of His Work Yves Bonnefoy New edition Flammarion 2006 Giacometti A Biography James Lord Farrar Straus and Giroux 1997 Looking at Giacometti David Sylvester Henry Holt amp Co 1996 Alberto Giacometti Herbert Matter amp Mercedes Matter Harry N Abrams September 1987 A Giacometti Portrait James Lord Farrar Straus and Giroux 1 July 1980 Alberto Giacometti Reinhold Hohl H N Abrams 1972 Alberto Giacometti Reinhold Hohl Stuttgart Gerd Hatje 1971 Alberto Giacometti Jacques Dupin Paris Maeght 1962 The Studio of Alberto Giacometti Collection of the Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti Veronique Wiesinger ed exh cat Paris Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti Centre Pompidou 2007 ISBN 978 2 84426 352 0 The Dream the Sphinx and the Death of T Alberto Giacometti X magazine Vol 1 No 1 November 1959 An Anthology from X Oxford University Press 1988 Jacobi Carol Out of the Cage The Art of Isabel Rawsthorne London The Estate of Francis Bacon Publishing Feb 2021 ISBN 978 0 50097 105 5 Matter Mercedes 28 January 1966 A Life Spent in Pursuit of the Impossible LIFE Vol 60 no 4 pp 54 60 ISSN 0024 3019 The Cube and the Face Around a Sculpture by Alberto Giacometti Didi Huberman Georges 2015 External links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Alberto Giacometti Wikiquote has quotations related to Alberto Giacometti The Alberto et Annette Giacometti Foundation website Alberto Giacometti SIKART Lexicon on art in Switzerland Publications by and about Alberto Giacometti in the catalogue Helveticat of the Swiss National Library Works of Alberto Giacometti The UNESCO Works of Art Collection Alberto Giacometti at the Museum of Modern Art smARThistory Giacometti s City Square Life of Alberto Giacometti Chronology of his life with illustrations from the Museum of Modern Art Exhibition at Kunsthaus Zurich from 27 February until 24 May 2009 Alberto Giacometti in the National Gallery of Australia s Kenneth Tyler Collection Alberto Giacometti in American public collections on the French Sculpture Census website Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Alberto Giacometti amp oldid 1135864094, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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