Alberto Giacometti. Sculpture. Painting. Drawing
5 December 2008 - 8 February 2009

The exhibition in the Twelve-Column Hall is organised within the frames of the traditional “Days of the Hermitage”. This is the first comprehensive display of the works by Giacometti at the Hermitage. The exhibition features about 80 works: 26 sculptures, 7 paintings and 27 graphical works, as well as photographs of Giacometti by Ernst Scheidegger. The exhibit items are contributed by the Swiss museum Kunsthaus in Zurich, Alberto Giacometti’s Foundation being a constituent part of the museum where the larger part of the artist’s heritage is presented, as well as by the Beyeler Foundation from Basel.

Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) is one of the legendary artists of the XX century. His works are easily recognisable; his name is well-known throughout the globe. He embodied his worldview in his sculptural compositions without loud and scandalous declarations. The narrow vertical lines of his almost immaterial figures characterising his “mature style” draw together and capture any kind of space, from museum interior to city squares.

Giacometti tried himself in all contemporary spheres of art. Dissatisfied with the absence of results in figurative art, the artist turns towards cubism combining it with the plastic of the African sculpture. This gives birth to such sculptures as ”The Couple” and “Spoon Woman”. The prototype for the latter was a grain bucket that was spotted by the artist at an exhibition of African art. Later Giacometti turns to surrealism. He creates a series of significant works which he called "sculptures trapped in the cage". “Invisible object” and Cube” (1934) became the last surrealistic sculptures by Giacometti. After that he began a twelve-year period of searching for new ideas. The artist tries to portray vanishing figures; however, due to these efforts the figures become too small. Constantly searching for new ideas, in February 1946 the artist noticed a road sign with a human figure. This impression prompts him to create an own style with characteristic, very narrow prolonged figures. He “annihilates the dimensions" and flattens his figures till they are as thin as a blade. His transparent constructions represent a protest against the traditional language of the sculpture with its emphasised tangibility and weightiness.

The author of Giacometti’s biography Jacques Dupin wrote: “His sculptures are paintings placed in a three-dimensional space. They have neither the depth of the volume nor the flatness of the surface. They avoid everything that is massive or weighty. They need be comprehended head-on, not allowing going in circles. The pedestals of the figures are emphasised with the sole purpose of disentangling and displaying the strength of their splash, their lightness and dimensional fragility.

Giacometti creates a series of works in the irrational style, his ultimate work being “The Chariot”. These works are presented in December 1950 at the exhibition in the gallery of Pierre Matisse in New-York (some of them are painted).

Working with a model for one of his paintings prompts Giacometti to overcome his style characterised by extremely prolonged figures. In the busts, the model for which was Giacometti’s brother Diego, as well as in the sketches of his naked wife Anette, the sculptor develops his own methods of realism.

In the mature age the artist returns to painting using its possibilities of expressing dimensional depth of the canvas. A special place in the creative activity of Giacometti is given to portraits. The artist’s favourite model there, just like in the sculpture, was Diego, a talented furniture and interior designer. Without changing the posture and the aspect angle of the model, the artist experimented with the size of the canvas, drawing the image nearer and further, searching for the correlation of forms.

In the course of his life Giacometti paid a persistent interest towards household items, people surrounding him and the phenomena of nature that provoked him to constant experimenting in various materials and genres of art. In the still-life paintings drawn with the pen-and-ink technique or with a graphitic pencil, the static nature lives its own quiet life. The artist’s keen glance reveals the true nature of the ordinary things that we seldom notice. It seems as if they are entering into a dialog, eloquently telling us about the habits, tastes and the lifestyle of their owner.

The contemporaries saw the reflection of the philosophic trends in the works of Giacometti and analysed the influence that various avant guard art exerted upon the development of his style. A surrealist theorist Andre Breton considered the works of the artists a perfect illustration of the surrealist aesthetics. The French philosopher and drama writer Jean-Paul Sartre regarded the creative activity of Giacometti a reflection of existentialism. However, the artist himself, not putting a stop to the evolution of his style, in his essays and notes negated any connection to any trend in philosophy or art.

The supervisors of the exhibition are Elena Karcheva, senior research associate, and Maria Shlikevich, junior research associate of the Department of West European Art of the State Hermitage.

Gazing Head
1928
Larger view

Lying Woman "Who dreams"
1929
Larger view

Arm
1947
Larger view

Chariot
1950
Larger view

Dog
1951
Larger view

Nude Taken from Nature
1954
Larger view

Lothar II
1965
Larger view

Bust of a Man, New York II
1965
Larger view