| Maker(s): | Giacometti, Alberto
| | Culture: | Swiss (1901 - 1966)
| | Title: | Sculptures dans l'atelier, from Catalogue Galerie Beyeler
| | Date Made: | 1963
| | Type: | Print
| | Materials: | Etching printed in black on moderately textured cream-colored paper
| | Measurements: | sheet: 11 5/16 in x 8 3/4 in; 28.7 cm x 22.2 cm; plate: 10 in x 7 3/4 in; 25.4 cm x 19.7 cm
| | Narrative Inscription: | edition and signature in pencil below image: 110/150 Alberto Giacometti
| | Accession Number: | SC 2012.1.7
| | Credit Line: | Gift of The Pokross Art Collection, donated in accordance with the wishes of Muriel Kohn Pokross, class of 1934 by her children, Joan Pokross Curhan, class of 1959, William R. Pokross and David R. Pokross Jr. in loving memory of their parents, Muriel Kohn Pokross, class of 1934 and David R. Pokross
| | Museum Collection: | Smith College Museum of Art
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Label Text:
Alberto Giacometti, a Switzerland native and son of the painter Giovanni Giacometti, settled in Paris in 1922 after studying in art in Geneva and Italy. As a young artist, Giacometti became known as the most innovative sculptor among the Surrealist group in Paris, into which André Breton inducted him in 1930. His style evolved after World War II, when he began to produce the sculptures of attenuated, skeletal-looking figures for which he is best known, suggesting human beings compressed by an almost palpable space.
In prints, as in his paintings, Giacometti created stark portraits of men and women, their faces rendered as a vortex of lines, their bodies seeming to thrum with vitality. His representation of the isolation and anonymity of figures in space earned him a reputation as an existentialist artist, an interpretation first introduced by Jean-Paul Sartre, one of the foremost existentialist philosophers of the period.
Working primarily in lithograpy and etching, Giacometti produced over 350 prints over the course of his career. Sculptures dans l’atelier depicts a cluster of figures in an artist’s studio. “A living person is distinguished from a dead one only by the gaze,” Giacometti wrote, specifying that sculpture should imitate not the eye but the intensity of the gaze. In this etching, it is difficult to distinguish which of the figures are sculptures and which, if any, are human beings.
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https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=SC+2012.1.7 |
