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Alberto Giacometti (, , ; 10 October 1901 – 11 January 1966) was a Swiss sculptor, painter,
draftsman
A drafter (also draughtsman / draughtswoman in British and Commonwealth English, draftsman / draftswoman or drafting technician in American and Canadian English) is an engineering technician who makes detailed technical drawings or plans for ...
and
printmaker. Beginning in 1922, he lived and worked mainly in
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
but regularly visited his hometown
Borgonovo to see his family and work on his art.
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
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
questions about the
human condition
The human condition is all of the characteristics and key events of human life, including birth, learning, emotion, aspiration, morality, conflict, and death. This is a very broad topic that has been and continues to be pondered and analyzed f ...
, as well as
existential
Existentialism ( ) is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the problem of human existence and centers on human thinking, feeling, and acting. Existentialist thinkers frequently explore issues related to the meaning, purpose, and valu ...
and
phenomenological debates played a significant role in his work. Around 1935 he gave up on his Surrealist influences in order 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.
Between 1938 and 1944 Giacometti's sculptures had a maximum height of seven centimeters (2.75 inches). 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". After
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, 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.
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 painting
Monochromatic painting has been an important component of avant-garde visual art throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century. Painters have created the exploration of one color, examining values changing across a surface, texture, and n ...
s of his late work do not refer to any other artistic styles of modernity.
Early life
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
The Inquisition was a group of institutions within the Catholic Church whose aim was to combat heresy, conducting trials of suspected heretics. Studies of the records have found that the overwhelming majority of sentences consisted of penances, ...
. Coming from an artistic background, he was interested in art from an early age and was encouraged by his father and godfather. Alberto attended the
Geneva
, neighboring_municipalities= Carouge, Chêne-Bougeries, Cologny, Lancy, Grand-Saconnex, Pregny-Chambésy, Vernier, Veyrier
, website = https://www.geneve.ch/
Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevr ...
School of
Fine Arts. His brothers
Diego
Diego is a Spanish masculine given name. The Portuguese equivalent is Diogo. The name also has several patronymic derivations, listed below. The etymology of Diego is disputed, with two major origin hypotheses: ''Tiago'' and ''Didacus''.
...
(1902–1985) and
Bruno
Bruno may refer to:
People and fictional characters
*Bruno (name), including lists of people and fictional characters with either the given name or surname
* Bruno, Duke of Saxony (died 880)
* Bruno the Great (925–965), Archbishop of Cologne, ...
(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
The University of Zürich (UZH, german: Universität Zürich) is a public research university located in the city of Zürich, Switzerland. It is the largest university in Switzerland, with its 28,000 enrolled students. It was founded in 1833 f ...
, grew up together with them, having been orphaned at the age of 12 in 1905.
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
Max Ernst (2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German (naturalised American in 1948 and French in 1958) painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and Surrealis ...
,
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 phase in which his statues of Isabel became stretched out; her limbs elongated. 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
The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million volunteers, members and staff worldwide. It was founded to protect human life and health, to ensure respect for all human beings, and ...
. They married in 1949.
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.
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.
Later years
In 1958 Giacometti was asked to create a monumental sculpture for the
Chase Manhattan Bank
JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., doing business as Chase Bank or often as Chase, is an American national bank headquartered in New York City, that constitutes the consumer and commercial banking subsidiary of the U.S. multinational banking and fi ...
building in New York, which was beginning construction. Although he had for many years "harbored an ambition to create work for a public square", 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. 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
The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...
, 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
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
in New York. As his last work he prepared the text for the book ''Paris sans fin'', a sequence of 150
lithographs
Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German a ...
containing memories of all the places where he had lived.
Death
Giacometti died in 1966 of heart disease (
pericarditis) and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease at the Kantonsspital in
Chur
, neighboring_municipalities= Arosa, Churwalden, Tschiertschen-Praden, Domat/Ems, Felsberg, Malix, Trimmis, Untervaz, Pfäfers
, twintowns = Bad Homburg (Germany), Cabourg (France), Mayrhofen (Austria), Mondorf-les-Bains (Luxe ...
, 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.
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
Roland Dumas (; born 23 August 1922) is a French lawyer and Socialist politician who served as Foreign Minister under President François Mitterrand from 1984 to 1986 and from 1988 to 1993. He was also President of the Constitutional Counci ...
, 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.
Artistic analysis
Regarding Giacometti's sculptural technique and according to the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
: "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''.''"
In a letter to
Pierre Matisse, Giacometti wrote: "Figures were never a compact mass but like a transparent construction".
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.
"
rediscoveredthe 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."
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
Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to ...
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
Gilles Louis René Deleuze ( , ; 18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volu ...
calls "blocs of sensation" (as in Deleuze's analysis of
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both ...
). 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
Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...
and
existentialism
Existentialism ( ) is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the problem of human existence and centers on human thinking, feeling, and acting. Existentialist thinkers frequently explore issues related to the meaning, purpose, and valu ...
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
Etruscan art was produced by the Etruscan civilization in central Italy between the 10th and 1st centuries BC. From around 750 BC it was heavily influenced by Greek art, which was imported by the Etruscans, but always retained distinct characte ...
.
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...
in 1962, photographed by
Paolo Monti
Paolo Monti (11 August 1908 – 29 November 1982) was an Italian photographer, known for his architectural photography.
In his early period, Monti experimented with abstractionism as well as with effects such as blurring and diffraction. In 19 ...
">
Paolo Monti - Servizio fotografico (Venezia, 1962) - BEIC 6328561.jpg
Paolo Monti - Servizio fotografico (Venezia, 1962) - BEIC 6328565.jpg
''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. 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".
The emaciated figures are often interpreted as an expression of the existential fear, insignificance and loneliness of mankind. 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.
Legacy
Exhibitions
Giacometti's work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions including the
High Museum of Art
The High Museum of Art (colloquially the High) is the largest museum for visual art in the Southeastern United States. Located in Atlanta, Georgia (on Peachtree Street in Midtown, the city's arts district), the High is 312,000 square feet (28, ...
, Atlanta (1970);
Centre Pompidou
The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...
, Paris (2007–2008);
Pushkin Museum, Moscow ''"The Studio of Alberto Giacometti: Collection of the Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti"'' (2008);
Kunsthal
The Kunsthal ( en, Art Hall) is an art museum in Rotterdam. It opened in 1992.
Overview
The museum is situated in the Museumpark of Rotterdam next to the Natuurhistorisch Museum Rotterdam, and in the vicinity of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuni ...
Rotterdam (2008);
Fondation Beyeler, Basel (2009); Buenos Aires (2012);
Kunsthalle Hamburg
The Hamburger Kunsthalle is the art museum of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, Germany. It is one of the largest art museums in the country. The museum consists of three connected buildings, dating from 1869 (main building), 1921 (Kuppelsaa ...
(2013);
Pera Museum, Istanbul (2015);
Tate Modern
Tate Modern is an art gallery located in London. It houses the United Kingdom's national collection of international modern and contemporary art, and forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It ...
, London (2017);
Vancouver Art Gallery
The Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) is an art museum in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The museum occupies a adjacent to Robson Square in downtown Vancouver, making it the largest art museum in Western Canada by building size. Designed by Franc ...
, ''"Alberto Giacometti: A Line Through Time"'' (2019);
National Gallery of Ireland
The National Gallery of Ireland ( ga, Gailearaí Náisiúnta na hÉireann) houses the national collection of Irish and European art. It is located in the centre of Dublin with one entrance on Merrion Square, beside Leinster House, and another on ...
, Dublin (2022).
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).
From April 2019, the
Prado Museum
The Prado Museum ( ; ), officially known as Museo Nacional del Prado, is the main Spanish national art museum, located in central Madrid. It is widely considered to house one of the world's finest collections of European art, dating from the ...
in Madrid, has been highlighting Giacometti in an exhibition.
Public collections
Giacometti's work is displayed in numerous public collections, including:
*
Albright-Knox Art Gallery
The Buffalo AKG Art Museum, formerly known as the Albright–Knox Art Gallery, is an art museum at 1285 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, New York, in Delaware Park. the museum's Elmwood Avenue campus is temporarily closed for construction. It hosted e ...
,
Buffalo
*
Art Institute of Chicago
*
Baltimore Museum of Art
The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, is an art museum that was founded in 1914. The BMA's collection of 95,000 objects encompasses more than 1,000 works by Henri Matisse anchored by the Cone Collection of ...
,
Baltimore, Maryland
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...
*
Bechtler Museum of Modern Art,
Charlotte, North Carolina
Charlotte ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Located in the Piedmont region, it is the county seat of Mecklenburg County. The population was 874,579 at the 2020 census, making Charlotte the 16th-most populo ...
*
Berggruen Museum, Berlin
*
Botero Museum,
Bogotá, Colombia
*
Bündner Kunstmuseum
Bündner Kunstmuseum (English: ''Graubünden Art Museum'') is a Swiss art museum founded in 1919, and located in Chur, Switzerland.
About
The Villa Planta building was formerly a house owned by Jacques Ambrosius von Planta (1826–1901), built ...
Chur, Switzerland
*
Carnegie Museum of Art
The Carnegie Museum of Art, is an art museum in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Originally known as the Department of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute and was at what is now the Main Branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsbur ...
,
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsylva ...
*
Detroit Institute of Arts
The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), located in Midtown Detroit, Michigan, has one of the largest and most significant art collections in the United States. With over 100 galleries, it covers with a major renovation and expansion project comple ...
*
Fondation Beyeler, Basel
*
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was desig ...
, Washington D.C.
*
J. Paul Getty Museum
The J. Paul Getty Museum, commonly referred to as the Getty, is an art museum in Los Angeles, California housed on two campuses: the Getty Center and Getty Villa.
The Getty Center is located in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles and fea ...
, Los Angeles, California
*
Johnson Museum of Art,
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...
*
Kunsthaus Zürich
The Kunsthaus Zürich is in terms of area the biggest art museum of Switzerland and houses one of the most important art collections in Switzerland, assembled over the years by the local art association called '. The collection spans from the Midd ...
*
Kunstmuseum Basel
The Kunstmuseum Basel houses the oldest public art collection in the world and is generally considered to be the most important museum of art in Switzerland. It is listed as a heritage site of national significance.
Its lineage extends back to ...
*
Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art
The Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art is a museum in Hannam-dong, Yongsan-gu, Seoul, South Korea, run by the Samsung Foundation of Culture. It consists of two parts that house traditional Korean art and contemporary art. Museum 1 is designed by Swis ...
,
South Korea
South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korean Peninsula and sharing a land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed by the Yellow Sea, while its eas ...
*
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum).
LACMA was founded in 19 ...
*
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art is an art museum located on the shore of the Øresund Sound in Humlebæk, north of Copenhagen, Denmark. It is the most visited art museum in Denmark, and has an extensive permanent collection of modern and cont ...
, Denmark
*
Minneapolis Institute of Art
The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) is an arts museum located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Home to more than 90,000 works of art representing 5,000 years of world history, Mia is one of the largest art museums in the United State ...
*
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
, New York
*
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
*
National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
*
National Gallery of Canada
The National Gallery of Canada (french: Musée des beaux-arts du Canada), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's national art museum. The museum's building takes up , with of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the ...
, Ottawa
*
North Carolina Museum of Art
The North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA) is an art museum in Raleigh, North Carolina. It opened in 1956 as the first major museum collection in the country to be formed by state legislation and funding. Since the initial 1947 appropriation that e ...
,
Raleigh, North Carolina
Raleigh (; ) is the capital city of the state of North Carolina and the seat of Wake County in the United States. It is the second-most populous city in North Carolina, after Charlotte. Raleigh is the tenth-most populous city in the Southe ...
*
Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts
The Sainsbury Centre is an art gallery and museum located on the campus of the University of East Anglia, Norwich, England. The building, which contains a collection of world art, was one of the first major public buildings to be designed by ...
,
University of East Anglia
The University of East Anglia (UEA) is a public research university in Norwich, England. Established in 1963 on a campus west of the city centre, the university has four faculties and 26 schools of study. The annual income of the institution f ...
*
Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art
Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA) in the state of Arizona is a museum in the Old Town district of downtown Scottsdale, Arizona. The museum is dedicated to exhibiting modern works of art, design and architecture. The Museum has four ...
, Scottsdale, Arizona
*
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously exp ...
, New York
*
Tate
Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...
, London
*
Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art
Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, ( Persian: موزه هنرهای معاصر تهران), also known as TMoCA, is among the largest art museums in Tehran and Iran. It has collections of more than 3,000 items that include 19th and 20th centur ...
, Iran
*
University of Michigan Museum of Art
The University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor, Michigan with is one of the largest university art museums in the United States. Built as a war memorial in 1909 for the university's fallen alumni from the Civil War, Alumni Memorial Hall ori ...
*
Wadsworth Atheneum
The Wadsworth Atheneum is an art museum in Hartford, Connecticut. The Wadsworth is noted for its collections of European Baroque art, ancient Egyptian and Classical bronzes, French and American Impressionist paintings, Hudson River School lands ...
,
Hartford
Hartford is the capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It was the seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960. It is the core city in the Greater Hartford metropolitan area. Census estimates since t ...
*
Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, to ...
,
Minneapolis
Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origins ...
*
Vancouver Art Gallery
The Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) is an art museum in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The museum occupies a adjacent to Robson Square in downtown Vancouver, making it the largest art museum in Western Canada by building size. Designed by Franc ...
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 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. ''Grande Femme Debout II'' was bought by the
Gagosian Gallery
Gagosian is a contemporary art gallery owned and directed by Larry Gagosian. The gallery exhibits some of the most influential artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. There are 16 gallery spaces: five in New York City; three in London; two in P ...
for $27.4 million at
Christie's auction in New York City on 6 May 2008.
''
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
Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, an ...
, London. ''
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. As of now it is the most expensive sculpture sold at auction.
After being showcased on the BBC programme ''
Fake or Fortune
''Fake or Fortune?'' is a BBC One documentary television series which examines the provenance and attribution of notable artworks. Since the first series aired in 2011, ''Fake or Fortune?'' has drawn audiences of up to 5 million viewers in ...
'', a plaster sculpture, titled ''Gazing Head'', sold in 2019 for half a million pounds.
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).
Other legacy
Giacometti created the monument on the grave of
Gerda Taro at
Père Lachaise Cemetery
Père Lachaise Cemetery (french: Cimetière du Père-Lachaise ; formerly , "East Cemetery") is the largest cemetery in Paris, France (). With more than 3.5 million visitors annually, it is the most visited necropolis in the world. Notable figure ...
.
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.
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
''Final Portrait'' is a 2017 drama film written and directed by Stanley Tucci. The film stars Geoffrey Rush, Armie Hammer, Clémence Poésy, Tony Shalhoub, James Faulkner, and Sylvie Testud. The film had its world premiere at the Berlin Internati ...
'' retells the story of his friendship with the biographer
James Lord. Giacometti is played by
Geoffrey Rush
Geoffrey Roy Rush (born 6 July 1951) is an Australian actor. He is known for his eccentric leading man roles on stage and screen. He is among 24 people who have won the Triple Crown of Acting, having received an Academy Award, a Primetime Em ...
.
References
Citations
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
Yves Jean Bonnefoy (24 June 1923, Tours – 1 July 2016 Paris) was a French poet and art historian. He also published a number of translations, most notably the plays of William Shakespeare which are considered among the best in French. He was pr ...
(2006). ''Alberto Giacometti: A Biography of His Work'', New edition, Flammarion
*
*
Further reading
* ''Alberto Giacometti. L'espace et la force'',
Jean Soldini, Kimé (2016).
* ''Alberto Giacometti'',
Yves Bonnefoy
Yves Jean Bonnefoy (24 June 1923, Tours – 1 July 2016 Paris) was a French poet and art historian. He also published a number of translations, most notably the plays of William Shakespeare which are considered among the best in French. He was pr ...
, 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)
* "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
*
* The Cube and the Face: Around a Sculpture by Alberto Giacometti, Didi-Huberman, Georges (2015).
External links
The Alberto et Annette Giacometti Foundation website*
*
* Works of Alberto Giacometti:
*
The UNESCO Works of Art Collection**
*
smARThistory: Giacometti's ''City Square''* Life of Alberto Giacometti:
*
Chronology of his life with illustrationsfrom the Museum of Modern Art
Exhibition at Kunsthaus Zürich from 27 February until 24 May 2009Alberto Giacometti in the National Gallery of Australia's Kenneth Tyler Collection*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Giacometti, Alberto
1901 births
1966 deaths
20th-century Swiss male artists
20th-century Swiss sculptors
Modern sculptors
People from Maloja District
Sibling artists
Surrealist artists
Swiss Protestants
Swiss surrealist artists
Swiss-Italian people