Giacometti : Entre Tradition Et Avant-Garde

Exhibition at the Musée Maillol, Paris, from September 14, 2018 to January 20, 2019 

A major artist of the 20th century, Alberto Giacometti created an emblematic body of work in modern art, surprisingly combining tradition and avant-garde. From his early works, marked by the teaching of Antoine Bourdelle, to the post-Cubist and Surrealist innovations, and then to the unmistakable style of his postwar period, this book offers an original look at Giacometti's sculpture. Richly illustrated, it shows the evolution of his style, in dialogue with the great sculptors he met at various moments of his career: Rodin, Bourdelle, Despiau, Maillol, Brancusi, Laurens, Lipchitz, Zadkine, Csaky or Richier. Numerous photographs and lithographs of Giacometti's studio illustrate, alongside Maillol's, this mythical creative space where he spent his entire life and produced a world-renowned body of work. Three enlightening contributions by art historians - Valérie Da Costa, Catherine Grenier, and Agnès de La Beaumelle - help us understand the context of this decisive period for sculpture. Texts by Giacometti on his contemporaries (Laurens and Richier), as well as an interview with the artist conducted in 1962, plunge us into the questions specific to the modern sculptor.