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Alberto Giacometti

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Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti Erhard Wehrmann Biennale Venezia 1962.jpg
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

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.

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]

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American English

American English

American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States and in most circumstances is the de facto common language used in government, education and commerce. Since the 20th century, American English has become the most influential form of English worldwide.

Drafter

Drafter

A drafter is an engineering technician who makes detailed technical drawings or plans for machinery, buildings, electronics, infrastructure, sections, etc. Drafters use computer software and manual sketches to convert the designs, plans, and layouts of engineers and architects into a set of technical drawings. Drafters operate as the supporting developers and sketch engineering designs and drawings from preliminary design concepts.

Printmaking

Printmaking

Printmaking is the process of creating artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand processed technique, rather than a photographic reproduction of a visual artwork which would be printed using an electronic machine ; however, there is some cross-over between traditional and digital printmaking, including risograph.

Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km², making it the fourth-most populated city in the European Union as well as the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2022. Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of the world's major centres of finance, diplomacy, commerce, fashion, gastronomy, and science. For its leading role in the arts and sciences, as well as its very early system of street lighting, in the 19th century it became known as "the City of Light". Like London, prior to the Second World War, it was also sometimes called the capital of the world.

Borgonovo, Switzerland

Borgonovo, Switzerland

Borgonovo is a small village, part of a former municipality Stampa. It is now part of the municipality of Bregaglia in the Maloja district of the Swiss canton Graubünden, Switzerland.

Cubism

Cubism

Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related artistic movements in music, literature, and architecture. In Cubist works of art, the subjects are analyzed, broken up, and reassembled in an abstract form—instead of depicting objects from a single perspective, the artist depicts the subject from multiple perspectives to represent the subject in a greater context. Cubism has been considered the most influential art movement of the 20th century. The term cubism is broadly associated with a variety of artworks produced in Paris or near Paris (Puteaux) during the 1910s and throughout the 1920s.

Philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Some sources claim the term was coined by Pythagoras, although this theory is disputed by some. Philosophical methods include questioning, critical discussion, rational argument, and systematic presentation.

Human condition

Human condition

The human condition can be defined as 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 from many perspectives, including those of anthropology, art, biology, history, literature, philosophy, psychology, and religion.

Existentialism

Existentialism

Existentialism is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the issue of human existence. Existentialist philosophers explore questions related to the meaning, purpose, and value of human existence. Common concepts in existentialist thought include existential crisis, dread, and anxiety in the face of an absurd world, as well as authenticity, courage, and virtue.

Phenomenology (philosophy)

Phenomenology (philosophy)

Phenomenology is the philosophical study of the structures of experience and consciousness. As a philosophical movement it was founded in the early years of the 20th century by Edmund Husserl and was later expanded upon by a circle of his followers at the universities of Göttingen and Munich in Germany. It then spread to France, the United States, and elsewhere, often in contexts far removed from Husserl's early work.

Figurative art

Figurative art

Figurative art, sometimes written as figurativism, describes artwork that is clearly derived from real object sources and so is, by definition, representational. The term is often in contrast to abstract art:Since the arrival of abstract art the term figurative has been used to refer to any form of modern art that retains strong references to the real world.

Monochrome painting

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 nuance, expressing a wide variety of emotions, intentions, and meanings in many different forms. From geometric precision to expressionism, the monochrome has proved to be a durable idiom in Contemporary art.

Early life

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

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Venice Biennale

Venice Biennale

The Venice Biennale 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 its kind. The main exhibition held in Castello, in the halls of the Arsenale and Biennale Gardens, alternates between art and architecture. The other events hosted by the Foundation—spanning theatre, music, and dance—are held annually in various parts of Venice, whereas the Venice Film Festival takes place at the Lido.

Paolo Monti

Paolo Monti

Paolo Monti was an Italian photographer, known for his architectural photography.

Biblioteca europea di informazione e cultura

Biblioteca europea di informazione e cultura

The Biblioteca Europea di Informazione e Cultura is an ongoing project based in Milan, Italy for the realization of a new modern library. It began in the late 1990s, when Antonio Padoa-Schioppa submitted the idea for the first time to the City of Milan and the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism. The library is split in two main units: physical and virtual.

Borgonovo, Switzerland

Borgonovo, Switzerland

Borgonovo is a small village, part of a former municipality Stampa. It is now part of the municipality of Bregaglia in the Maloja district of the Swiss canton Graubünden, Switzerland.

Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located at the confluence of Western, Central and Southern Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east.

Giovanni Giacometti

Giovanni Giacometti

Giovanni Ulrico Giacometti was a Swiss painter. He was the father of artists Alberto and Diego Giacometti and architect Bruno Giacometti.

Post-Impressionism

Post-Impressionism

Post-Impressionism was a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction against Impressionists' concern for the naturalistic depiction of light and colour. Its broad emphasis on abstract qualities or symbolic content means Post-Impressionism encompasses Les Nabis, Neo-Impressionism, Symbolism, Cloisonnism, the Pont-Aven School, and Synthetism, along with some later Impressionists' work. The movement's principal artists were Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh and Georges Seurat.

Geneva

Geneva

Geneva is the second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Situated in the south west of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the capital of the Republic and Canton of Geneva.

Fine art

Fine art

In European academic traditions, fine art is made primarily for aesthetics or creative expression, distinguishing it from decorative art or applied art, which also has to serve some practical function, such as pottery or most metalwork. In the aesthetic theories developed in the Italian Renaissance, the highest art was that which allowed the full expression and display of the artist's imagination, unrestricted by any of the practical considerations involved in, say, making and decorating a teapot. It was also considered important that making the artwork did not involve dividing the work between different individuals with specialized skills, as might be necessary with a piece of furniture, for example. Even within the fine arts, there was a hierarchy of genres based on the amount of creative imagination required, with history painting placed higher than still life.

Diego Giacometti

Diego Giacometti

Diego Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor and designer, and the younger brother of the sculptor Alberto Giacometti.

Bruno Giacometti

Bruno Giacometti

Bruno Giacometti was a Swiss architect and the brother of the artists Alberto and Diego Giacometti. He was among the most notable post-World War II architects in Switzerland.

University of Zurich

University of Zurich

The University of 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 from the existing colleges of theology, law, medicine which go back to 1525, and a new faculty of philosophy.

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]

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Antoine Bourdelle

Antoine Bourdelle

Antoine Bourdelle, born Émile Antoine Bordelles, was an influential and prolific French sculptor and teacher. He was a student of Auguste Rodin, a teacher of Giacometti and Henri Matisse, and an important figure in the Art Deco movement and the transition from the Beaux-Arts style to modern sculpture.

Auguste Rodin

Auguste Rodin

François Auguste René Rodin was a French sculptor, generally considered the founder of modern sculpture. He was schooled traditionally and took a craftsman-like approach to his work. Rodin possessed a unique ability to model a complex, turbulent, and deeply pocketed surface in clay. He is known for such sculptures as The Thinker, Monument to Balzac, The Kiss, The Burghers of Calais, and The Gates of Hell.

Cubism

Cubism

Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related artistic movements in music, literature, and architecture. In Cubist works of art, the subjects are analyzed, broken up, and reassembled in an abstract form—instead of depicting objects from a single perspective, the artist depicts the subject from multiple perspectives to represent the subject in a greater context. Cubism has been considered the most influential art movement of the 20th century. The term cubism is broadly associated with a variety of artworks produced in Paris or near Paris (Puteaux) during the 1910s and throughout the 1920s.

Surrealism

Surrealism

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 leader André Breton, to "resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality", or surreality. It produced works of painting, writing, theatre, filmmaking, photography, and other media.

Joan Miró

Joan Miró

Joan Miró i Ferrà was a Spanish painter, sculptor and ceramicist born in Barcelona. He was known as Joan Miró in the art recognition. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his native city of Barcelona in 1975, and another, the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró, was established in his adoptive city of Palma in 1981.

Max Ernst

Max Ernst

Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and Surrealism in Europe. He had no formal artistic training, but his experimental attitude toward the making of art resulted in his invention of frottage—a technique that uses pencil rubbings of textured objects and relief surfaces to create images—and grattage, an analogous technique in which paint is scraped across canvas to reveal the imprints of the objects placed beneath. Ernst is noted for his unconventional drawing methods as well as for creating novels and pamphlets using the method of collages. He served as a soldier for four years during World War I, and this experience left him shocked, traumatised and critical of the modern world. During World War II he was designated an "undesirable foreigner" while living in France. He died in Paris on 1 April 1976.

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and the anti-war painting Guernica (1937), a dramatic portrayal of the bombing of Guernica by German and Italian air forces during the Spanish Civil War.

Bror Hjorth

Bror Hjorth

Bror Hjorth was a Swedish artist. Hjorth was one of Sweden’s best-known sculptors and painters, and was professor of art at the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm from 1949 to 1959. On completion of his studies, he lived in Uppsala, where he built his studio home in Kåbo, now the Bror Hjorths Hus museum. He was awarded the Sergel Prize in 1955.

Balthus

Balthus

Balthasar Klossowski de Rola, known as Balthus, was a Polish-French modern artist. He is known for his erotically charged images of pubescent girls, but also for the refined, dreamlike quality of his imagery.

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.

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Metropolitan Museum of Art

Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas and the most-visited museum in the Western Hemisphere. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 Fifth Avenue, along the Museum Mile on the eastern edge of Central Park on Manhattan's Upper East Side, is by area one of the world's largest art museums. The first portion of the approximately 2-million-square-foot (190,000 m2) building was built in 1880. A much smaller second location, The Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan, contains an extensive collection of art, architecture, and artifacts from medieval Europe.

Venice Biennale

Venice Biennale

The Venice Biennale 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 its kind. The main exhibition held in Castello, in the halls of the Arsenale and Biennale Gardens, alternates between art and architecture. The other events hosted by the Foundation—spanning theatre, music, and dance—are held annually in various parts of Venice, whereas the Venice Film Festival takes place at the Lido.

Museum of Modern Art

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.

Death

100 Swiss franc banknote 1998–2019, front100 Swiss franc banknote, back
100 Swiss franc banknote 1998–2019, front
100 Swiss franc banknote 1998–2019, front100 Swiss franc banknote, back
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]

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Artistic analysis

Alberto GiacomettiPhoto by Henri Cartier-Bresson
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]

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Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French humanist photographer considered a master of candid photography, and an early user of 35mm film. He pioneered the genre of street photography, and viewed photography as capturing a decisive moment.

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas and the most-visited museum in the Western Hemisphere. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 Fifth Avenue, along the Museum Mile on the eastern edge of Central Park on Manhattan's Upper East Side, is by area one of the world's largest art museums. The first portion of the approximately 2-million-square-foot (190,000 m2) building was built in 1880. A much smaller second location, The Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan, contains an extensive collection of art, architecture, and artifacts from medieval Europe.

Pierre Matisse

Pierre Matisse

Pierre Matisse was a French-American art dealer active in New York City. He was the youngest child of French painter Henri Matisse.

Francis Bacon (artist)

Francis Bacon (artist)

Francis Bacon was an Irish-born British figurative painter known for his raw, unsettling imagery. Focusing on the human form, his subjects included crucifixions, portraits of popes, self-portraits, and portraits of close friends, with abstracted figures sometimes isolated in geometrical structures. Rejecting various classifications of his work, Bacon said he strove to render "the brutality of fact." He built up a reputation as one of the giants of contemporary art with his unique style.

William Barrett (philosopher)

William Barrett (philosopher)

William Christopher Barrett (1913–1992) was a professor of philosophy at New York University from 1950 to 1979.

Modernism

Modernism

Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, and social organization which reflected the newly emerging industrial world, including features such as urbanization, architecture, new technologies, and war. Artists attempted to depart from traditional forms of art, which they considered outdated or obsolete. The poet Ezra Pound's 1934 injunction to "Make it New" was the touchstone of the movement's approach.

Existentialism

Existentialism

Existentialism is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the issue of human existence. Existentialist philosophers explore questions related to the meaning, purpose, and value of human existence. Common concepts in existentialist thought include existential crisis, dread, and anxiety in the face of an absurd world, as well as authenticity, courage, and virtue.

Pinacothèque de Paris

Pinacothèque de Paris

The Pinacothèque de Paris was an art gallery in Paris, France, with exhibition space for temporary exhibitions of artworks. It was owned and run by Modigliani enthusiast Marc Restellini. It closed in 15 February 2016 after going into receivership in November 2015.

Etruscan art

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 characteristics. Particularly strong in this tradition were figurative sculpture in terracotta, wall-painting and metalworking especially in bronze. Jewellery and engraved gems of high quality were produced.

Venice Biennale

Venice Biennale

The Venice Biennale 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 its kind. The main exhibition held in Castello, in the halls of the Arsenale and Biennale Gardens, alternates between art and architecture. The other events hosted by the Foundation—spanning theatre, music, and dance—are held annually in various parts of Venice, whereas the Venice Film Festival takes place at the Lido.

Paolo Monti

Paolo Monti

Paolo Monti was an Italian photographer, known for his architectural photography.

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.

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Source: "Alberto Giacometti", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2023, March 14th), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Giacometti.

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References

Citations

  1. ^ "Giacometti, Alberto". 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.
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  37. ^ "Art record Picasso painting goes for £39m at auction". The Guardian. London. 10 November 2000. Retrieved 23 April 2010.
  38. ^ "Afp.google.com, Monet fetches record price at New York auction". 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. ^ "Schweizer Nationalbank". Archived from the original on 27 January 2010. Retrieved 16 September 2019.

General sources

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).
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