Rosemont Art Advisory is pleased to present you the Exclusive Interview with the Scientific and Collections Director of Giacometti Institute, Emilie Bouvard.
Q1. Giacometti as a man and as an artist Can you please tell us more about Giacometti as an artists but also as a big sculptor? Has he any links to Monaco and the French Riviera ?
Alberto Giacometti was born and trained in the Italian-speaking region of Switzerland, in an artistic milieu, though living in the mountains. His father was a important post-impressionnist painter, friend of Cuno Amiet and Ferdinand Hodler. He then went to Paris in the 1920’s to become a sculptor (he painted also). He followed Antoine Bourdelle’s classes at the Atelier de la Grande Chaumière, and was exposed to the Parisian avant-gardes of the 1920s and the 1930s, from cubism to abstraction and surrealism. He was able to assimilate all of them so as to elaborate his own style, but it took him more than 15 years to achieve it and to become the Giacometti that is the most well-known.
Giacometti is one of the greatest modern figurative sculptors, but also a man devoted to his research and who experienced failures, hard work and renewals. Easiness was not part of his creative process. In the Grimaldi Forum exhibition, we are attached to show his specific path : the importance of the Swiss milieu, his genuine connexion to the mountains rocky landscape and his love of Egyptian art, the importance of obsessive figures like the Head, the essential role of the model, etc. Some of these thematics are completely new and result from the research we make at the Fondation Giacometti.
Giacometti had no strong connexion to the French and Italian Riviera, but went to Italy as a young man, and then for shows like the Venice Biennal.
Q2. How many pieces are exhibited in the Grimaldi Forum ? Any special pieces which haven’t been exhibited?
For the Grimaldi Forum, we have gathered more than 230 artworks, and also an important ensemble of photographs and films. The excellent exhibition conditions of the Forum allowed us to show rarely exhibited and fragile pieces like painted plasters. In the important section devoted to « Nature » are confronted youth watercolors representing landscapes from the Grisons Valley, which were never exhibited, to plaster busts from the 1950s and the 1960s. A room presents and exceptional ensemble of painted portraits from the 1950s and the 1960s : and rare occasion to be faced to the disturbing and beautiful paintings by Giacometti.
We could also gather emblematic masterpieces, which are key sculptures of Giacometti’s creative process : the Spoon Woman (1927), the Walking Woman (1932), the Invisible Object (1934-1935), the Woman with Charriot (1943-45) or the Walking Man (1960).
Q3. Can you please tell us about the mission of the Giacometti Institute and your next project?
The Fondation Giacometti is devoted to the study and the diffusion of Alberto Giacometti’s work. Our rich collection of more that 10 000 pieces (sculptures, paintings, drawings, prints, photographs and Alberto’s personal archives) allows us to build great exhibitions projects around the world, and also in Paris in our Institut Giacometti, which is also a place devoted to Research : our Ecole des Modernités program can be followed online.
This summer, we present in Paris an exhibition devoted to Giacometti and Egypt, in collaboration with the Musée du Louvre, before confronting Giacometti to the French-American living sculptor Barbara Chase-Riboud in October. Our collection will travel in Voorlinden in the Netherlands this autumn and in the US in 2022-23.
The Giacometti Institute is the reference place for Giacometti's work and an art history center which includes exhibitions, research and pedagogy.
With a surface area of 350 m2, the Giacometti Institute is located at 5 Rue Victor Schœlcher in the 14th arrondissement, the Montparnasse neighbourhood where Giacometti lived and worked throughout his career. It is housed within the former studio of artist and interior designer Paul Follot, in a listed heritage building, a private mansion in the art deco style, with decors have been preserved and restored.
https://www.fondation-giacometti.fr/en
Credit Pictures:
- Portrait of Emilie Bouvard - © Photo : Fondation Giacometti, Paris
- Selection of pics taken in the exhibition © Grimaldi Forum Monaco 2021 © Succession Alberto Giacometti (Fondation Giacometti, Paris + ADAGP, Paris, 2021)
- Grimaldi Forum building © Grimaldi Forum Monaco 2021 except the aerial view that should be © Grimaldi Forum Monaco 2021 © MC CLIC 2019