Alberto Giacometti
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Alberto Giacometti |
Portrait of A. Giacometti by Jan Hladík, 2002, etching
|
| Born |
10 October 1901
Borgonovo, Stampa, Graubünden, Switzerland |
| Died |
11 January 1966 (aged 64)
Chur, Graubünden, Switzerland |
| Nationality |
Swiss |
| Field |
Sculpture, Painting, Drawing |
| Training |
The School of Fine Arts, Geneva |
| Movement |
Surrealism, Expressionism, Cubism, Formalism |
| Awards |
"Grand Prize for Sculpture" at 1962 Venice Biennale |
Alberto Giacometti (
Italian pronunciation: [alˈbɛrto dʒakoˈmetti]; 10 October 1901 – 11 January 1966) was a
Swiss sculptor,
painter,
draughtsman, and
printmaker. Alberto Giacometti was born in the canton
Graubünden's southerly alpine valley
Val Bregaglia and came from an artistic background; his father,
Giovanni, was a well-known
post-Impressionist painter. Alberto was the eldest of four children and was interested in art from an early age.
Early life
Giacometti was born in
Borgonovo, now part of the Swiss municipality of
Stampa, near the Italian border. He was a descendant of Protestant refugees escaping the
Italian Inquisition. His father,
Giovanni Giacometti, was a painter. Alberto attended the School of
Fine Arts in
Geneva.
In 1922 he moved to Paris to study under the sculptor
Antoine Bourdelle, an associate of
Auguste 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
Joan Miró,
Max Ernst,
Pablo 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). This was followed by a unique artistic
phase in which his statues of Isabel became stretched out; her limbs
elongated.
[1]
Obsessed with creating his sculptures exactly as he envisaged 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."
After his marriage to Annette Arm in 1946 his tiny sculptures became
larger, but the larger they grew, the thinner they became. Giacometti
said that the final result represented the sensation he felt when he
looked at a woman.
His paintings underwent a parallel procedure. The figures appear
isolated, are severely attenuated, and are the result of continuous
reworking. Subjects were frequently revisited: one of his favorite
models was his younger brother
Diego Giacometti.
[2] A third brother,
Bruno Giacometti, was a noted architect.
Later years
Alberto Giacometti by Reginald Gray. Paris.1965. published by The New York Times
Current 100 Swiss Franc banknote, back
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",
[3]
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.
[4] 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 travelled 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.
Giacometti died in 1966 of
heart disease (
pericarditis) and
chronic bronchitis at the Kantonsspital in
Chur,
Switzerland. His body was returned to his birthplace in Borgonovo,
where he was interred close to his parents. In May 2007 the executor of
his widow's estate, French foreign minister
Roland Dumas,
was convicted of illegally selling Giacometti's works to a top
auctioneer. The auctioneer, Jacques Tajan, was also convicted. Both were
ordered to pay €850,000 to the Alberto and Annette Giacometti
Foundation.
[5]
Artistic analysis
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 ones work carefully in its
smallest recess and charge every particle of matter with life."
A new exhibition in Paris, since September 2011, shows how Giacometti strongly drew his inspiration for his work from
Etruscan art.
[6]
Legacy
Exhibitions
Giacometti's work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions including most recently
Pushkin Museum, Moscow (2008); “The Studio of Alberto Giacometti: Collection of the Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti,”
Centre Pompidou, Paris (2007-2008); Kunsthal Rotterdam (2008);
Fondation Beyeler, Basel (2009), Buenos Aires (2012); and Kunsthalle Hamburg (2013).
Public collections
Giacometti's work is displayed in numerous public collections, including the:
- Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Baltimore Museum of Art, in Baltimore, Maryland
- Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, in Charlotte, North Carolina
- Berggruen Museum, Berlin
- Bündner Kunstmuseum, in Chur, Switzerland
- Carnegie Museum of Art, in Pittsburgh
- Detroit Institute of Arts
- Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.
- J. Paul Getty Museum, in Los Angeles, California
- Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University
- Kunsthaus Zürich
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art
- Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, in Denmark
- Museo Botero, in Bogotá, Colombia
- Museum of Modern Art, New York
- Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
- National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.
- Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at University of East Anglia
- Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
- Tate, London
- Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, in Iran
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
established in Zürich in 1965, holds a smaller collection of works
acquired from the collections of Pittsburgh industrialist G. David
Thompson.
Notable sales
In November 2000 a Giacometti bronze,
Grande Femme Debout I, sold for
$14.3 million.
[8] Grande Femme Debout II was bought by the
Gagosian Gallery for $27.4 million at
Christie's auction in New York City on May 6, 2008.
[9]
L'Homme qui marche I,
a life-sized bronze sculpture of a man, became one of the most
expensive works of art and the most expensive sculpture ever sold at
auction on February 2, 2010 when it sold for £65 million (US$104.3
million) at
Sotheby's, London.
[10][11] Grande tête mince, a large bronze bust, sold for $53.3 million just three months later.
Other legacy
Giacometti created the monument on the grave of
Gerda Taro at
Père Lachaise Cemetery.
[12]
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 current
100 Swiss Franc banknote.
[13]
According to Dr.
Michael Peppiatt in a lecture at Cambridge University on July 8, 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".
Notes
- Jump up ^ New York Times article on The Women of Giacometti exhibition, Pace Wildenstein Gallery 2005 [1]
- Jump up ^ Tate Collection: Seated Man by Alberto Giacometti Retrieved July 13, 2007.
- Jump up ^ http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/LotDetailsPrintable.aspx?intObjectID=5075599
- Jump up ^ James Lord, Giacometti: A Biography, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1986, pp. 331-332 ISBN ISBN 978-0-374-52525-5 ISBN 0374525250
- Jump up ^ "Conviction Upheld Against Former French FM in Giacometti Fraud". May 10, 2007. Retrieved 2008-04-16
- Jump up ^ Giacometti and The Etruscans, La Pinacothèque de Paris
- Jump up ^ http://leeum.samsungfoundation.org/html_eng/exhibition/exhibition_view.asp
- Jump up ^ "Art record Picasso painting goes for £39m at auction". The Guardian (London). 2000-11-10. Retrieved 2010-04-23.
- Jump up ^ Afp.google.com, Monet fetches record price at New York auction
- Jump up ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8497287.stm Giacometti sculpture fetches £65m at Sotheby's auction
- Jump up ^ Alberto Giacometti's Walking Man I Sells for a Record-Breaking $104,327,006 at Sotheby's
- Jump up ^ Robert Whelan, "Robert Capa, the definitive collection", p8, Phaidon press 2001 ISBN 978-0-7148-4449-7
- Jump up ^ Schweizer Nationalbank
References
- 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. Sculptures - peintures - dessins. Paris, Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1991-92.
- 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
- Andreas Weiland, "The Sculptures of Alberto Giacometti / Seen in the
Kunsthal Rotterdam (Giacometti Exhibition, October 18, 2008 – February
8, 2009)", in: Art in Society, issue # 10
http://www.art-in-society.de/AS10/Giacometti-3/Giacometti.html
- Laurie Wilson, (2003) Alberto Giacometti: Myth Magic and the Man (Yale University Press)
Bibliography
- Alberto Giacometti, Yves Bonnefoy, Assouline Publishing (February 22, 2011)
- In Giacometti's Studio, Michael Peppiatt, Yale University Press (December 14, 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 (July 1, 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 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).
External links
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