098 ARTIST STUDIOS
In December 1926, a 25-year-old artist moved into a small rented studio at 46 rue Hippolyte- Maindron in Montparnasse. In that tiny ground-floor space, less than 23m2
, poorly lit
and for decades without running water, he produced masterpieces of modern art. He was Alberto Giacometti. He had spent the previous three years frequently moving between cheap hotels and sublet workshops. Te new home- cum-studio had been acquired on a whim. ‘I planned on moving as soon as I could,’ he told a friend. ‘It was too small, just a hole.’ He stayed there for 40 years and, like Brancusi, colonised the adjoining buildings, cocooning himself inside. Jean Genet described the place as ‘a milky swamp, a seething dump, a genuine ditch’. And yet he also wrote that it was ‘the most important and the most complete’ of the artist’s works, ‘his other self, the essence and ultimate residue of his artistic contribution’. After Giacometti died in 1966, aged 64, the studio was repossessed by the landlord: but not before his wife Annette had removed all of its contents, including the paint and plaster- splattered walls. Some 52 years later, the studio found a new home as the centrepiece of a research centre, the Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti. It took a year to find the site and another year to restore and fit out. Close to the artist’s stomping ground and all his local hangouts like Le Dôme, Le Select and La Coupole, it is about a mile from the original studio, occupying 350m2
of an Art Deco
building at 5 Rue Victor Schoelcher, formerly the showroom of the decorator Paul Follot. Unused since the 1940s and extremely run down, it was refurbished by architects Pascal Grasso and Pierre-Antoine Gatier. Te building facade and parts of its interior are listed, making it a challenge to create public access without altering the original structure. All of the installations are set away from the walls and demountable, respecting the building’s own history while giving real identity to the institute.
To finance the property purchase and building costs, the foundation sold a 1954 Miró painting given by the artist to Giacometti. It sold for nearly £7.8m at Sotheby’s in 2015.
Tis place is not a replica, it is an ‘evocation’ of Giacometti’s working environment. It attempts to recreate the spirit of the man and the place, but it does have the original walls and some of the last pieces Giacometti was working on when he died. Te layout is based on ‘thousands of photographs of the studio’ in the foundation’s archives, starting in the early years but mainly from the last decade of Giacometti’s life. Te photographers Ernst Scheidegger and Sabine Weiss, both friends of the artist, took the lion’s share.
Te foundation is home to the world’s largest collection of Giacometti’s work, including around 350 mostly plaster sculptures, 90 paintings, more than 2,000 drawings and etchings, about 2,000 photographs and extensive archives, all of which Giacometti had managed to keep in his studio and in a small storage space nearby. For the first time, it is possible to see many fragile and previously damaged pieces of work.
Te studio has certainly been brought back to life. Catherine Grenier, the director of the new centre (and formerly deputy director of the Centre Pompidou) said: ‘Tere was very little space, he almost couldn’t move. He liked the chaos… He said it was like the inside of his skull.’ Te intimacy of the space is very emotional. Te studio presentation rarely changes and there are no facsimiles. Grenier explained: ‘Te battered furniture is the same that Giacometti hung on to for years and all the works from all the periods of his career, finished, unfinished and even broken’ are original. Te artist’s final clay sculptures are here, a pair of painted walls, hundreds of sculptures and other objects. Te whole approach is one of delicate restoration rather than to have copies.
Institut
Giacometti, 5 Rue Victor Schoelcher, Paris
Left Institut Giacometti is home to 350 sculptures, 90 paintings, and 2,000 drawings and etchings
Hoglands, Much Hadham
The Hertfordshire home of Henry Moore was where the sculptor moved in order to escape the Blitz on London in 1940. At first it was shared with another family, until the sale of work enabled Moore to buy the place outright. He gradually bought up 70 of the surrounding acres, which are now a fine garden displaying his work.
RIGHT AND ABOVE: INSTITUT GIACOMETTI PARIS
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133
