Giacometti

Tate Modern

10^th May – 10^th Sep 2017

I went to London to visit the Giacometti exhibit in late August and although I can’t relate to his style of work, it was interesting to view a different way of producing artwork. The gentleman’s work I was looking at was called Alberto Giacometti, a post-modern artist who has engaged with movements such as cubism and surrealism over the years. Materials like clay, plaster and paint were very present when walking around the different rooms in the exhibition but there were also a few drawings and decorative objects that were quite fascinating to view. The exhibition presented a lot of his larger scale work and as I walked through I noticed the sculptures were becoming taller, broader and narrower. I felt as though great progression was taking place around me and it was nice to be able to witness each finished result of work produced by such a famous artist.

‘By doing something a half centimetre high, you are more likely to get a sense of the universe than if you try to do the whole sky’

There were ten different rooms each providing evidence of artwork containing different meanings to the artist himself and quotations with small sections of information explaining what was on view and what he was trying to portray at the time of development. An artist inspired by his father’s work as a child he was eager to make his work known and ‘when he returned to Paris after the Second World War his figures with highly textured surfaces and the distinctive portrait paintings’ started becoming extremely well known. He also started producing sculptures of human heads as I saw in the exhibition, ‘these were the people to whom he felt closest, including his mother and father, his brother Diego, his wife Annette, and friends such as the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir.’ My favourite room was ‘Room 1’ of which there were ‘Bust of Annette VIII, 1962’ and ‘Bust of Annette X, 1965’. I liked the fact that both sculptures were based on his wife Annette however the end results were both such different interpretations.

Bibliography:

TATE Giacometti Exhibition Programme 10^th May – 10^th Sep 2017

TATE Introductions Giacometti by Lena Fritsch

Bust of Annette X 1965
Bronze
45×18.5×13.4
Collection Foundation
Giacometti, Paris

Bust of Annette VIII
1962
Plaster
60.2×27.5×25.2
Kunsthaus Zurich, Alberto Giacometti-Stiftung