Alberto Giacometti retrospective
Proa Foundation opens a retrospective exhibition of works by Alberto Giacometti (Borgonovo, Switzerland, 1901-1966). The exhibition, curated by Véronique Wiesinger, brings together 146 works created between 1910 and 1960, including sculptures, paintings, drawings, prints, and decorative arts coming, mostly, from the Alberto and Annette Giacometti Foundation, plus three items from private collections in Argentina and one from the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro.
This retrospective encompasses the central topics in Giacometti's creative exploration: his education with Cézanne, the enduring imprint of magical thinking and Surrealism, and the invention of a new representation of the human.
The exhibition is also an opportunity to revisit the artist's encounters with South American curators and patrons who traveled to France in the 1930s, attracted by Paris' vibrant cultural scene. The first collector to acquire a Giacometti, Tête qui regarde, purchased in 1929, was an Argentinean: Elvira de Alvear. A copy of this work is included in the retrospective.
The show's curator, Véronique Wiesinger, is the director of the Alberto and Annette Giacometti Foundation and also the author of the retrospective presented at the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris in 2007.
The catalog—a project of Véronique Wiesinger—is the largest publication about the artist ever published in Argentina. It includes reproductions of works in the exhibit, texts by the curator, and a previously unpublished research article by Cecilia Braschi on Giacometti's connections with South America, which make it an essential reference volume in Spanish.
The fruit of a three-year project and a close collaboration between the Giacometti Foundation, the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, and the Proa Foundation, this ambitious exhibition was produced by Base7 Projetos Culturais and supported by the Embassy of France in Argentina and Tenaris-Techint Organization. In Brazil, the show's stay at the MAM in Rio de Janeiro was sponsored by TenarisConfab.
