The Alberto Giacometti-Stiftung in Zurich—the fruit of a private initiative by a group of far-sighted and enterprising art lovers and launched while Alberto Giacometti (1901-66) was still alive—provided the basis for the extraordinary Giacometti collection at the Kunsthaus Zürich. The collection is still growing thanks to additional, major private donations.
Alberto Giacometti’s youngest brother Bruno (1907-2012) and his wife Odette had already made a number of generous endowments to Kunsthaus Zürich prior to their famous 2006 donation when they bestowed on the Alberto Giacometti-Stiftung in Zurich seventy-five works in plaster, two in plasticine and one in wood.
From October 28, 2016 until January 15, 2017, Kunsthaus Zürich hosted the groundbreaking exhibition Alberto Giacometti: Beyond Bronze. The above-mentioned works—never exhibited before that date—are all detailed in a separate list at the end of the homonymous catalogue.
I sadly missed the exhibition but finally got the time to read the catalogue; English edition at Amazon.com, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.fr. The book focuses on Alberto Giacometti’s works beyond bronze—that is in plasticine, clay, plaster, wood and stone.
The catalogue contains mainly chronological chapters with short introductions to the relevant periods in Alberto Giacometti’s life and work: The Childhood and Early Work (1901–1919), Training and Early Years in Paris (1920–1924), Early Avant-Garde Years (1925–1929), The Surrealist Years (1930–1934), Return to Figuration and Years of Crisis (1935–1945), Period of Maturation (1946–1958), The Late Years (1959–1966).
In addition to the Forword by Christoph Becker, we have to mention catalogue entries by Christian Klemm regarding Alberto Giacometti: Works in Plaster; Philippe Büttner: Alberto Giacometti’s Use
of Sculptural Material; Catherine Grenier: Entry into the Tower of Babel. The Years 1925 to 1929; Stefan Zweifel: Giacometti’s Studio: The Fetish Statue of the Now; Christian Klemm: The Gift to the Alberto Giacometti-Stiftung in 2006; Kerstin Mürer: From Traces to Certain Knowledge—A Four-Year Research and Conservation Project on the Plasters of Alberto Giacometti. At the end of the book, you can find a glossary, a list of works commented with conservational evidence, a bibliography as well as a list of previous exhibitions.
Let’s not forget to mention that many museums, collections and private individuals have contributed to the Zurich exhibition. Last, but not least the huge Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti (FAAG) in Paris which supported the Zurich exhibition and the catalogue in a variety of ways. Annette, Alberto’s wife, established this second Giacometti foundation in Paris. The two organisations cooperate regularly and the Kunsthaus Zürich has been the grateful beneficiary of an important number of loans from the Paris foundation.
Christian Klemm writes in Alberto Giacometti: Works in Plaster that, in 1935, shaken by his father’s death and weary of the cleverness of the Surrealists, Alberto Giacometti went in search of a new conception of the human being appropriate to his own ideas and to his time while working before his models. He worked with clay. The amorphous material with its pocked and porous surface creates the first element of surprise, for it is so indefinite, so seemingly random, that the form and existence of the figures appear uncertain and precarious.
Christian Klemm underlines that most of Giacometti’s sculptures went through three states. They acquired their initial shape in the medium of clay. However, clay will crack, causing the work to disintegrate, as soon as it is no longer swathed in damp cloths to keep it moist, and so a negative image must be made of the initial clay piece. This negative image is the mould from which the durable sculpture emerges in the form of a rigid plaster cast. This original plaster cast—which Giacometti continued to work on—is the closest we can get to the artist’s creative process. The plaster cast was then used to make another mould from which the final bronze piece was cast.
A partner of Kunsthaus Zurich since 1991, Credit Suisse sponsored the exhibition and catalogue Alberto Giacometti: Beyond Bronze (Amazon.com, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.fr). The Sponsor’s Foreword is notable and quotable:
‘So as not to die’, Alberto Giacometti replied, when asked why he became a sculptor. A talented painter and draughtsman, he nevertheless opted to train as a sculptor because this was the realm in which he felt confronted by the greatest challenges: ‘I couldn’t endure having encountered insurmountable obstacles in this area. I had no choice.’
At an early age Giacometti was convinced that failure rather than success was the path to fulfilment. His oeuvre was informed by unrelenting attempts to render the world as he saw it. In the creation of a sculpture, the plaster cast represents the intermediary phase between the fragile clay model and the final form in bronze—not unlike the pupation phase in the metamorphosis of a butterfly. It was precisely this stage of the transformation that Giacometti cherished: the journey was not yet complete, he could continue to work the plaster even when dry, painting it, adding more plaster or taking it away. The pupation in plaster contains the promise of great artistic variety and possibilities.
Wise words by someone at or writing for Credit Suisse. This richly illustrated catalogue is a must. The historic and 2016/17 photographs of Alberto Giacometti, his atelier and his works were made by photographers such as Brassaï, Ernst Scheidegger, Emile Savitry, Paul Almasy, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dominic Büttner and others.
Alberto Giacometti: Beyond Bronze. Scheidegger & Spiess, Zurich, hardcover, 2016, 256 pages. Order the catalogue / book from Amazon.com, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.fr.
The name of the editor of this great book, Scheidegger, may sound familiar to you. Ernst Scheidegger was a Swiss photographer famous notably for his photographs of Alberto Giacometti, his atelier and his artworks. If you read German, have a look at Ernst Scheidegger: Alberto Giacometti. Spuren einer Freundschaft. It is a book about the photographer’s friendship with the great artist. [Added on May 17, 2021: Ernst Scheidegger made the photograph used for the CHF 100.- bill depicting Alberto Giacometti; on the other side of the bill, you can find Giacometti’s L’homme qui marche I from 1961].
For a better reading, quotations and partial quotations from the book reviewed here are not put between quotation marks.
Book / Catalogue review added on May 12, 2021 at 20:03 Swiss time. Updated at 20:06.
