2023-04-29 10:00:28
Am; Lek
In 2008, a sculpture by the renowned Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti was sold for 27.4 million dollars. In 2010, a statue of him was already sold for 100 million dollars, and five years later the value jumped to 141 million dollars. And all this when he is no longer alive, because in 1966 he had a heart attack and died.
Now his exhibition is coming to Israel to open the renovated Helena Rubinstein Pavilion of the Tel Aviv Museum, which has been renamed Eyal Ofer. How did the prices of his works manage to increase so much in the last 15 years? “I saw the collection, about 10,000 extraordinary items, and I said to myself that it cannot remain in the dark.”
After three years of renovation, next month the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion of the Tel Aviv Museum, located at the corner of Dizengoff-1579 streets (behind the Bhima Theater and Culture Hall), will be opened to the public again next month. However, apart from the fact that the space has changed its face, it will also boast the renewed name Il Ofer Pavilion The move did provoke criticism on the grounds of the disappearance of women from the public sphere, after the Rubinstein Foundation had financially supported the museum for more than 60 years, and a petition was even filed on the issue that is still being discussed in court – but a $5 million donation from Ofer for its renovation tipped the scales.
Eyal Ofer / Photo: Anne-Sophie Heist
The local art circles hoped that the upcoming launch would be accompanied by a monumental Israeli exhibition, as required from a place that has been used since its establishment in 1959 as a permanent home for Israeli art. But surprisingly, the walls of the new building will be decorated with an international-prestigious fragrance in a production estimated at NIS 5-10 million. The artist chosen for this purpose is the Swiss painter and sculptor Alberto Giacometti, one of the most famous and important artists of the 20th century.
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“This is not the first time that a museum is inaugurated with an exhibition of his works. It happened in Morocco, in Doha, and it will happen in other places in the future,” explains Catherine Graina, a researcher and art historian, one of the former senior curators at the Pompidou Museum in Paris and director of the Giacometti Foundation, which manages his estate.
“The goal of the fund is to reveal Giacometti’s work – both in countries where he is not known and in countries where he is known, but there are new generations of art lovers.”
And really, Giacometti is perhaps among the most valued artists in the world today, and his works sell for hundreds of millions of dollars. But it wasn’t always like that.
He who began creating in the 1920s in Paris, gained international recognition about 20 years later, with the end of World War II, when his works reached museums and galleries in Europe and the USA and became sought after by art collectors. Except that what happened 40 years after his death could not be Watch.
In 1966, Giacometti passed away after suffering from heart disease and chronic bronchitis. His works sold well during his lifetime and after his death as mentioned, but in the last 15 years the esteemed artist recorded a meteoric rise.
According to Artnet’s price database, a website that covers international art markets, in 2008 the bronze sculpture he created, Grande femme debout II, 2.74 meters high, was bought at Christie’s in New York for $27.4 million. Until that year it was the highest price for which a sculpture by Giacometti had been sold.
In 2010, there was a turning point when he became the first and only sculptor to date to cross the $100 million mark at auction, when his sculpture L’homme qui marche from 1960 was sold at Sotheby’s in London for $104 million.
In 2015, at an auction at Christie’s in New York, Steve Cohen, owner of the American hedge fund Point 72, purchased a 1.8 meter tall sculpture called L’homme au doigt 1947 for 141 million dollars.
Three years ago the sculpture Grande femme I (2.76 meters high, 1966) was offered for sale at Sotheby’s in New York for 90 million dollars. The identity of the buyer and the final price have not yet been revealed.
“The value of Giacometti is so high today that the foundation has no ability to acquire new works for the collection, but only to keep what is currently included in it,” explains Graina.
graina “Everywhere we adapt the exhibition to the intended audience” / Photo: Keren Giacometti Foundation
“He was a well-known artist, but not rich”
What made Giacometti one of the most recognized artists of all time? Without diminishing anything from his very unique talent, it seems that his creations simply ended up in the right hands.
“Giacometti and his wife had no children, says Graina. “Annette, his widow, decided to establish a foundation after his death. In France, the state decides on the establishment of museums and then finances them, and when Chante wanted to establish the foundation it was so complex, there were many arguments and bureaucratic matters. Another thing that made it difficult for her was that she didn’t have much money, and she couldn’t purchase a space. Giacometti was a well-known artist when he died, but certainly not rich.”
In 2014, Graina entered the picture, when she started managing the fund. She arrived there following her work at the Center Pompidou, during which she curated for 20 years prominent exhibitions in France and in the world of senior artists, such as Christian Boltanski, Maurizio Catalan and Annette Massaje.
“At the museum I dealt a lot with the cultural upheaval of Paris at the beginning of the 20th century, an upheaval that originated from the artists who came there, each with their own cultural treasure. Alberto Giacometti is one of them.
“When I took up my duties, the foundation was focused on the preservation of the works and the fight against forgeries. It was a very closed organization, which dealt with internal issues. I came with a curatorial background. I saw the collection that Ant bequeathed, about 10,000 items, an extraordinary collection – both in the quantity and the quality of the works. I said to myself that it cannot remain in the dark.
“I suggested that we buy a small exhibition space in Paris, which would be the foundation’s activity center. We called it the Giacometti Institute and presented exhibitions there. On top of that, we created collaborations and loaned works to exhibitions. Little by little we established our audience, became known, and received support because we proved that we able to do things”.
Besides the distribution of his works, the fund became an agreed upon address that confirms their originality (“We have no word regarding the prices of the works”) and the completion of the Resona catalog, which includes all the works of an artist during all the years of his work and serves as the most important source of information for his works.
Where does the funding come from?
“We have no government funding, because there is no recognition of private foundations. Our foundation is among the few that has an exhibition space and a team of researchers. This only happens if the artist is rich at the time of his death, and it happened to some contemporary artists, but in the case of modern artists this is almost never the case. We profit from copyrights, from the sale of related items, postcards and such, from the institute’s tickets and donations.”
A rare series that will be shown in Tel Aviv
Alberto Giacometti was born in 1901 in a small Swiss town called Borgonovo, the eldest of the four children of Giovanni Giacometti, a well-known post-impressionist painter. Upon graduation he moved to Geneva to study at an art school.
At the age of 21, he moved to Paris, where he studied sculpture under the guidance of Antoine Bordel, who was the assistant of the renowned French sculptor Auguste Rodin. He soon integrated into the art circles of the city, in particular among the artists of the Surrealist movement, including Juan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Baltos and Andre Breton, and a friend of writers and intellectuals such as Samuel Beckett, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.
From the mid-1930s, Giacometti focused on sculpting the human head. Then he began to create in a new and unique way thin and elongated human sculptures, which became the works identified with him.
During the Second World War, Giacometti lived in Geneva, where he met his wife Annette Arme, a secretary at the Red Cross, who later also became his modelist. At the end of the war they returned to Paris. From this period on, the exhibit won international recognition.
What is unique about his art?
“He shed from his works everything related to anecdotes or history, every identifying detail or sign of an era. He asked himself what was the subject that always preoccupied humans, the representation of themselves. In his eyes, the human figure evokes identification, and therefore he adopted this as almost the only subject . We don’t really understand the context in which Egyptian art was created, for example, but it still speaks to us. That’s what he tried to do.”
Did he create works of a political nature?
“He was an ardent communist, although he never registered as a party member. Unlike other artists of his time, he did not create mobilized art or period political images. There is no trace of this in his works. His figures cannot be categorized into any category: gender, age, class, origin Ethnicity, political or economic affiliation. This is one of the reasons he is a very popular artist, you can approach them without any labeling. They are human and universal, and for that reason they cross generations, audiences, languages and cultures.”
How will the exhibition in Tel Aviv differ from those presented in the world?
“We don’t present the same exhibition everywhere, but try to adapt the content to the intended audience. The Chinese, for example, wanted context, so in the exhibition in Shanghai we combined a lot of photographs and documents, so that they get to know the period and not just Giacometti. Tel Aviv, like Paris, It is a western city with knowledge and access to modern art, so it is not required.
“The curators, Hugo Daniel from the Giacometti Foundation and Ronili Lustig Steinmetz from the Tel Aviv Museum, decided to focus on the human figure in Giacometti’s works. We will present great works from his surrealist period, alongside painted sculptures, which are a rarity for him, and a series of sculptures he made during the World War The second one we hardly present.”
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