A little of Giacometti...

9:25 p.m.

 
06/06/23 - Alberto Giacometti (Switzerland, 1901-1966) was interested in sculpture early in his childhood, perhaps because he came from a family of artists. As a child he spent time in his father's studio, where he began working on the first pieces of his own production. Although he studied at the art school, his desire to see the work of other artists abroad made him decide to drop out and settle in Paris (the great capital of art at the time). His powerful imagination and his energy in representing human forms took sculpture to unsuspected limits for the first decades of the 20th century. Let's start the tour:

 
Object, by Alberto Giacometti (1931-32)
Marble

Although he modeled his first pieces after the forms of Auguste Rodin, he suddenly abandoned naturalism for extreme simplification, observed in statues from the years 4000 to 1100 BC produced in Greece. Object is the maximum reduction of a figure. With few cuts and a single point of view (the front), this sculpture represents the breakthrough that Giacometti caused in the history of Art.
 

The nose, by Alberto Giacometti (1947)
Plaster, metal
 

In 1947 the recent death of a friend led him to create a basic and simple structure, yet full of agony, entitled The Nose. One head hangs by a thread, as if it were a spider hanging from its web, cheeks sunken, mouth apparently open, as if exhaling its last breath, and the nose exaggeratedly pronounced. 
 
Bust of Annette IX, by Alberto Giacometti (1964)
Bronze
Standing Annette, by Alberto Giacometti (1954)
Bronze
 

Giacometti created numerous portraits of his wife Annette, reflecting his obsession with his muse. Trying to capture the reality of the model, he applied a share of psychological intensity to exemplify the relationship with his beloved. Annette, who was his wife since 1949, spent several hours posing for the artist. Thus, in the 1950s, begins a period that Jean-Paul Sartre describes as: "the impossible search for the absolute" in relation to the representation of the face.

Petrified, from only one point of view (the front), hieratic in her attitude, Bust of Annette exudes the intensity of an ancient goddess. 
 
Walking man, by Alberto Giacometti (1960)
Plaster
 

After the Second War, his works were rediscovered with realism and the "figures that walk" are born. They are emblematic sculptures where a naked man, in solitude, advances fragile, but determined (basically representing what the war left behind). This series of sculptures achieved exaggerated prices at auctions and are part of the permanent collections of the most important museums in the world.
 
The Cat, by Alberto Giacometti (1951)
Painted plaster
 

We end this historical journey through Giacometti's works with The Cat, one of the few animals that the artist represented. The image is simple but easily recognizable and, despite the fact that he added some details to the head, we recognize its essence in the extreme horizontality of his thin and elongated figure.

Impossible not to become immersed in these sculptures and the philosophical questions about the human condition after a war that emerge from the work of one of the leading artists of the 20th century.

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Contents

Liliana Wrobel


Production & Translation

Carla Mitrani

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