Dozens of artworks by Alberto Giacometti never before shown in public are to be exhibited for the first time, along with a reconstruction of his chaotic, plaster-splattered studio.
An exhibition, education and research centre in Paris, named the Giacometti Institute, will open on 20 June, dedicated to the tortured genius whose elongated figures are among the greatest masterpieces of 20th-century art.
The institute, in the district of Montparnasse, where the Swiss artist lived and worked throughout his career, was made possible by the Giacometti Foundation, which holds more than 300 sculptures of his, as well as 90 paintings and nearly 5,000 drawings, lithographs and notebooks.
Catherine Grenier, the institute’s director, said that while Giacometti works had been loaned to exhibitions, including the big retrospective at Tate Modern, in London, in 2017, more than 100 drawings and 40 sculptures had never been shown before or published anywhere.
“They are very important,” she said, singling out a plaster version of his Walking Man, arguably his most famous sculptural theme. A bronze version broke auction records in 2010 when it sold in London for £65m – though his Pointing Man sculpture achieved more, selling for £90m in New York in 2015.
Grenier also drew attention to an “absolutely wonderful” plaster depiction of a seated woman figure and a painted plaster depiction of a woman in a cage. “It will never move. It will be in a vitrine … [such] works in plaster and clay … are so fragile they have never been publicly exhibited.”
There are 200 books or so in the exhibition with Giacometti sketches adorning pages, and there is also a copy of a 1959 literary review bearing a vibrant image of a figure walking across the text.
The collection was bequeathed by the artist’s widow, Annette, who died in 1993. The couple had married in 1949 and she had been one of his favourite models. She kept every item from his studio, even removing walls painted by her husband – who died in 1966 at the age of 64 – when the landlord refused to sell her the building.
Until now the foundation has had an extraordinary collection and nowhere to exhibit it, but that will all change with the purchase of the art deco, listed building in Montparnasse. The building is near Giacometti’s studio, which his friend Simone de Beauvoir had described as “submerged in plaster”, noting that “whenever he goes out, his clothes, his hands and his thick, matted, hair are covered with plaster … he takes no notice, he works”.
Grenier said Giacometti did not own the studio but that after he died his widow “took everything, the works, the furniture, also the walls”. With the aid of photographs of Giacometti at work, the studio will be reconstructed to appear exactly how it was at the time of his death in 1966 – a claustrophobic slum crammed with art, including figures in bronze, plaster and clay. All his paintbrushes and his furniture will be there.
Grenier, an art historian and former co-director of the Centre Pompidou, in Paris, said: “The walls will be the walls. Also the works that were there when he died … in bronze and plaster. And the last works he was working on when he died, which are in clay. They are so fragile that they have never been exhibited. They are figures.” Those last works include a striking portrait of the surrealist photographer Eli Lotar.
Like so many sought-after artists, Giacometti has been the target of forgers, including John Myatt and Robert Driessen, who each admitted to copying him. Last year, hundreds of artworks created for a British film about the artist had to be destroyed amid concerns they could surface on the open market. The film, entitled Final Portrait, with Giacometti portrayed by the Oscar-winning star Geoffrey Rush, reflects the artist’s troubled marriage – he urged his wife to have relationships with other men while he pursued a prostitute who became his muse.
Grenier said that fakes were very concerning and there were many. Some were very bad, others “sometimes quite good”. She said the foundation’s authentication committee was playing an important role in eradicating the forgeries from the market, issuing certificates for genuine pieces. “Auction houses and galleries … will come to us if they want to sell a work by Giacometti.”
Asked what the artist would have made of the extraordinary prices now fetched by his work, she said: “He was not interested at all in money, in glory. But I think he would have liked to see his work acknowledged. He would find it very amusing. In his time the dominant strand was abstraction and [his art] was considered outside the trend. Nowadays he’s one of the most respected and the most important … of all his generation. He would be happy with this.”
