Alberto Giacometti Lot n° 38

Alberto Giacometti Projet pour un monument pour Gabriel Péri. Projet pour une place 1946 Two bronze sculptures. 39,2 x 10,9 x 18,6 cm and 18,5 x 9,2 x 12,7 cm. Each signed on the left side surface of the base 'A. Giacometti' and each numbered on the reverse side surface and marked with the foundry stamp "C.VALSUANI CIRE PERDUE". Each copy 1/8. cast in 1993/1994 in an edition of 8 copies. - With beautiful greenish-brown patina. - In very good condition. Alberto Giacometti Database (AGD) 3901 and 4060 Each with a photo expertise by Hubert Lacroix, Catherine Grenier and Christian Klemm, Comité Giacometti, Paris, dated March and November 2018, respectively. Currently, the Comité Giacometti is composed of the following people: Catherine Grenier, Hubert Lacroix, and Casimiro Di Crescenzo. Provenance From the artist's circle of friends; private collection. Exhibitions Heilbronn/Künzelsau 1996 (Städtische Museen/Museum Würth), Squares and plazas: the square - a theme of small sculpture since Giacometti, cat. Nos. 51 and 52; Frankfurt am Main 1998/1999 (Schirn Kunsthalle), Alberto Giacometti. Works and Writings, cat. Nos. 18 and 20, with ill. pp. 43 and 45; Milan/Mannheim 2000 (Fondazione Antonio Mazzotta/Städtische Kunsthalle), I Giacometti. La valle, il mondo/The Giacometti Family. The valley, the world, with ill. p. 100 Literature Casimiro Di Crescenzo, Giacometti - Artist and Revolutionary, in: Ausst. Cat. Alberto Giacometti, Kunsthalle Wien/Edinburgh 1996, Stuttgart 1996, pp. 48-50, cf. cat. No. 117-119; Casimiro Di Crescenzo, Giacometti, Artist and Revolutionary, in: Ausst. Cat. Alberto Giacometti, Ravenna, Loggetta Lombardesca, 10.10.2004 - 20.2.2005, Milan 2004, pp. 55 ff. The monument design "Projet pour un monument pour Gabriel Péri" is an important milestone in Alberto Giacometti's oeuvre. Here, for the first time, he elaborates on the important motif of the striding man, which decisively dominates his further work and ultimately culminates in his most famous work, the life-size "L'homme qui marche" from 1960. Immediately after the end of World War II, many pictorial projects were initiated in France to honor the victims and heroes of the Resistance. Alberto Giacometti also participated several times in the conception of such monuments, probably at the suggestion of Louis Aragon. In 1946, the newspaper "L'Humanité" announced a competition in honor of the journalist and Communist Party deputy Gabriel Péri (1902-1941), who had been arrested and killed by the German occupiers after a public speech in the National Assembly in Paris. Casimiro Di Crescenzo, Giacometti researcher and member of the Comité Giacometti, has intensively studied the history of this monument design: "A monument was planned for Gabriel Péri to be placed in front of the Saint Lazare train station (now Place Gabriel Péri). This place was chosen because it was the terminus of the train connection to Argenteuil, the city that Gabriel Péri had represented as a deputy. This competition was never to be decided because the Communist Party left the government in 1947 and thus the idea of the monument had to be dropped." (Casimiro Di Crescenzo, Giacometti - Artist and Revolutionary, in: Ausst. Cat. Alberto Giacometti, Kunsthalle Vienna/Edinburgh 1996, Stuttgart 1996, p. 49; the same, Giacometti, Artist and Revolutionary, in: Ausst. Cat. Alberto Giacometti, Ravenna, Loggetta Lombardesca, 10.10.2004 - 20.2.2005, Milan 2004, p. 56). Giacometti designed the monument, conceived on a monumental scale, partly in collaboration with the American architect Paul Nelson, who was to design the pedestal. After the realization was rejected, the original conception of the "Projet pour un monument pour Gabriel Péri," which Alberto Giacometti had created without Nelson's participation, remained in his studio as a plaster design. It later passed to his brother Diego, as did the model "Projet pour une place", which was also created in this context. In 1993/94, bronze casts of these two important plasters were made in an edition of 8 copies each. "Projet pour un monument pour Gabriel Péri" marks a caesura in Alberto Giacometti's artistic oeuvre, for here for the first time he realizes the representation of a striding man. The sculpture combines the archaic form of an upright stele with the human figure so characteristic of Giacometti's oeuvre. The narrow, strongly elongated silhouette of the striding man shows the significant transformation to his mature style, after the earlier surrealist abstractions had already been replaced by realistic portraits in the mid-1930s.