Alberto Giacometti : [brochure] the Museum of Modern Art, October 11, 2001-January 8, 2002 Author Giacometti, Alberto, 1901-1966 Date 2001 Publisher The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition URL www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/165 The Museum of Modern Art's exhibition history— from our founding in 1929 to the present—is available online. It includes exhibition catalogues, primary documents, installation views, and an index of participating artists. MoMA © 2017 The Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art f OCTOBER11,2001-JANUARY 8 2002 ' FLOOPRLANS Galleries 1/2 FromStampa to theEarly Years in Paris,1918-27 3 Representationand Abstraction:Port raitHeads, S ummer1927 4 PlaqueSculptures,Signs in Space:The Beginnings of Surrealism,1928-30 5/6 Surrealism,1930-34 7 InSearch of a NewWay of Seeing,1934-45 8/9 PostwarParis,1947-51 10/11 Returningto Painting,1949-65 12 Drawings,1951-64/ Studiesof Diego and Annette:1950-54 13 TheWomen of Veniceand Figures for a PublicProject, 1956and i960 14 TheLastY ears,1962-65 1 LyA\ hoHA ALBERTOGIACOMETTI AlbertoGiacometti has been credited with the invention of "a wholenew tribe of people."Even for thoseonly slightly famil iar with twentieth-centuryart, animage of Giacometti'tribes leapsto mind.It is dominatedby frail, elongated,impossibly slenderrepresentations of figures:st andingwomen and walking menwith kneaded, gouged, and palpably animated surfaces, modeledin clayor plasterand then cast into bronze.First created in thelate 1940s in Giacometti'tiny,s crampedstudio in Paris,a citythen still reelingfrom the devastatingimpact of WorldWar II, thesefigures continue to hauntthe popularimagination when everGiacometti'name s is invoked. Thereare, however, other sides to Giacometti.Chief among themis the youngartist who began making elliptically erotic, essentiallyabstractsculpt uresin thelate 1920s—sculptures that, withina fewshort years, would catapult him to theforefront of the ParisianSurrealist avant-garde. There is alsoGiacometti the painter-sculptor-draftsman,anart istwho moved between medi umswith a fluidity unseenin anyof the othermodern masters of the pastcentury, with the exceptionsof PabloPicasso and Henri Matisse.T hepresentret rospective-thefirst to beheld in a New Yorkmuseum in overa generation-aimsto redressstereotypical notionsof Giacometandti to showhis artistic achievementin its truerichness and diversity. The exhibition affords the opportunity to seeGiacometti'sculpts urein its full developmentrangeal (from1919 through 1965), and reveals his great gifts asa painter anddraftsman. It featuressome ninety sculptures, forty paintings, andsixty drawings, many of which-inparticular the fragile plas ter, wood,and terra-cotta works of theartist's pre-World War II, or avant-garde,period-have rarely been seen in NewYork. Giacomettimade his first lastingimpression on an American audiencein 1948,wit ha retrospectiveexhibition of hiswork at the PierreMatisse Gallery, New York. Including his new, attenuated figures,t his showwas accompanied by a cataloguecontaining an essayby the influential existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre,and marked the inception of interpretationsof Giacometti's work as revealingthe anxiety and alienation of twentieth- centurylife. Eventoday, over half a centurylater, while readings of theartist's work have multiplied, this "existentialist"view of hisartistic achievementcont inuesto exerta powerfulhold. Giacometthowever,i, charact erizedhis projectin verydifferent terms.He saw himself as a realist,attempting the "impossible" 2 projectof representingthe appearance of things as he saw them, in a manneracknowledging that ourcomprehension of the per ceivedworld is neverfixed but constantly subject to change.His preoccupationwith whathe described as "rendering my vision" led himfirst to radicallyreimagine the forms of modernsculpture andsubsequenttly o returnto drawing,paint ing,and sculpting fromthe model,rendering these mostconvent ionalaspects of academicdiscipline powerful in importantnew ways. AlbertoGiacometti was born near Stampa, in the remote valleyof the Bregaglia,in thesoutheastern Swiss Alps,on October 10,1901.His parents,A nnettaGiacometti-Stampa and the Post- Impressionistpaint erGiovanni Giacomettcame i, from families withdeep ties to the region.Despite their relativeisolation, they wereon the friendliestof termswith prominent Swiss artists of thetime: Augusto Giacometti, one of thetwentieth century's ear liest adventurersinto abstraction,was a cousinof both;t he Fauvistpainter Cuno Amiet was the godfatherof theirfirstborn, Alberto;and the Symbolistpainter Ferdinand Hodler of their youngest,Bruno. Alberto's boyhood years attached him firmly to thevalley of hisbirth,and his first experiencesof art meshed seamlesslywith a closefamily life. Manyhappy hours spent in hisfather's studio provided the boywith an early and natural training.If Alberto'svocation as an artist was never in doubt,it yet poseda quandaryin hislate teens: how to choosebetween sculptureand painting. Aftersome cursory formal training in Genevaand travels in Italy,Giacometti would seem to haveresolved his dilemma when, in Januaryof 1922,he enrolled in Emile-AntoineBourdelle's sculptureclass at theAcademie de la GrandeChaumiere,in Paris. Withthe exceptionof threewartime years, Giacometti would henceforthlive in Parisuntil hisdeath in 1966,although he would makefrequent and sometimes lengthy visits to Stampa.These twovastly different places were the vital pointsof Giacometti's life, at the centerof hisenergies and creativity. 3 1/2 FROMSTAMPATOTHE EARLYYE ARSIN PARIS1918-27, Giacometti'exts raordinarynatural gifts, togetherwith his early training,had made him an accomplished artisteven before leaving highschool in the springof 1919.The sculpture, drawings, and paintingshe produced in Stampabetween 1918 and his arrival in Parisin 1922reflecthis close contactwit h contemporarySwiss modernismas well as his serious study of traditionalEuropean art. In onepair of drawingsfrom 1918of himselfand his mother, heturns the facesto a three-quarterview and cultivates stylistic traitsthat recallat onceAlbrecht Diirer and Nicolas Poussin; in a secondpair, the facesare frontal and subjected to a treatment stronglyreminiscent of Hodler.A small,exquisitely modeled headof his brotherBruno from 1919is classicallytraditional but infusedwith a sweetgentleness that is closeto the Gothic. Dramaticin conceptand execution,G iacomettSi'self-Portrait of 1921reveals much about the youngartist. In this, the largest paintinghe would make until 1947,Giacometti drew together all that he hadlearned from his father in animage of himselfas masterof histrade. The sure touch of brushand the flattened patterningof bright,densely packed tonal values show his easy controlover the paternalPost-Impressioniststyle. Intensely self-aware,the pose,set againstthe backgroundof the father's studio,is bold,and so mindfulof the bordersof the canvasthat the figurestrategically escapes their bounds.Literally and metaphorically,the picturereads as a declarationof the artist's intentto movebeyond the familiarworld of his youth.Whether Giacomettiknew at the time of its executionthat it would be oneof hislast serious adventuresinto paintingfor manyyears is questionable; in hindsight,though, the paintingsignals his move to Parisand his imminent shift towardsculpture. Self- Portraitjoints significantly to the futurein another sensealso:t o beassessed as a whole,the paintingwants the viewerto lookat it across the planeof its surface, Self-Portrait.1921. Oil on canvas, 32%x 28%"(82.5 x 72cm). AlbertoGiacometti-Stiftung,Zurich butto engagefully withits 4 subject,the paintingdemands that the viewerstand squarely in front of the figure,in anexchange of gaze.Giacometti would frequentlystrive for this obligatoryreciprocity of lookingin the 1920sand 1930s, and would come to pursueit with obsessive passionin the postwaryears. ByJanuary 1922, some six monthsafter the completionof Self-Portrait,Giacomettiwas in Paris,enrolled in Bourdelle's highlyreputed sculpture class. Training comprised modeling and drawingfrom life with occasionalcomments and corrections by Bourdelle.A lthoughtheir temperamentand s aesthetic views were muchat variance,the five yearsGiacometti-at times sporadi cally-attendedclasses were of fundamentalimportance to him. Hisfirst threeyears in Pariswere a periodof apprenticeshipfor the oncesupremely self-confident young artist. The process of learning,unlearning, and absorbing took placeonly partially in Bourdelle'sts udio.P ariswas rich with possibilities—amongthem the Museede l'Homme and its collectionsof tribaland Oceanic art, the Egyptianrooms at the Louvre,and the presenceof contem porarysculpture by ConstantinBrancusi, Aleksandr Archipenko, HenriLaurens, and Jacques Lipchitz, all of whomhad to a greater or lesserdegree assimilated Cubist principles into their art. Only a few experimentins sculpturesurvive from Giacometti'earlys studentyears in Paris,and these were made in Stampa,to which the artistwould regularly return for a monthor moreat a time. Hislife drawingsand notebook comments, however, reveal the problemshe was having finding a styleof his own. In Torso(1925), Giacometti established the rootsof his workto come.A small,intensely compelling piece, Torso has justifiablybeen related to almostall of the constellationof Parisianpresences enumerated above,as it haswith equal justice beenuniversally recognized as stamped by Giacometti'owns personality-hisfirst unequivocallymodern sculpture. Torso's stereometricasymmetry most immediately