Time.news – There is another Giacometti in addition to the internationally renowned Swiss sculptor Alberto, whose works are housed in the major world museums: he is his brother Diego, one year younger and certainly less known, but whose most eclectic art is now on display at the Rovati Foundation, in Milan, until 18 June.
“Diego, the other Giacometti” presents 60 works including sculptures, furnishings, small animals and ‘maquettes’ which represent the declinations of Diego Giacometti’s sculptural and design work. Among his sources of inspiration was Etruscan art, the protagonist of the permanent exhibition in the nineteenth-century building on Corso Venezia with which the exhibition ‘dialogues’.
The exhibition, curated by Casimiro Di Crescenzo and organized in collaboration with PLVR Zurich, is the first entirely dedicated to the artist in Italy and offers a cross-section of his refined art with works from the heirs of Diego Giacometti, the Fondation Giacometti in Paris, the ‘Alberto Giacometti Stiftung – conserved at the Kunsthaus in Zurich -, from the Musée Picasso-Paris in Paris and from private collections. Diego Giacometti, who died in 1985, 19 years after Alberto, was strongly linked to his brother with whom he lived a symbiotic relationship in the 40 years they spent together in Paris.
The two brothers were sons of the painter Giovanni and, despite the formal similarities between their works, Diego develops an original artistic style, characterized by his love for nature and animals. Diego’s is a production with an immediately recognizable style, which takes inspiration from archeology and mythology, combined with naturalistic and even surreal elements. Objects come to life and acquire their own personality. The works enhance the essentiality of the form, the perfect proportions and the subtle game of balance between the different components.
Diego’s work is an expression of 20th century art, in which aesthetics and functionality blend harmoniously. His bronze sculptures are masterpieces of creative and technical elaboration, in which every detail is taken care of with extreme precision; his furniture is designed to be used as seats or as tables, but at the same time they are unique and refined works of art.
The exhibition is developed in four themes, detailed in the catalogue:
- Between sculpture and design;
- Bestiary, with the important vein of animals seen as friends and life companions, from the puppy Rigolo, to the spider weaving the web in his studio, to the fox Misrose, to the cat Fofa;
- The Spazio Bianco collects a series of portraits of Diego by his father and brother;
- The three Oiseaux created in 1942 for the living room of Francis Gruber’s apartment are on display for the first time: the Mirror of 1942, born from a Baroque fantasy, the Hand of 1942-1944, and the Wall Lamp aux panthères, once placed in the artist’s house on rue du Moulin-Vert in Paris.
As explained by Giovanna Forlanelli, President of the Luigi Rovati Foundation, “the decision to host Diego Giacometti for the first time in Italy is motivated by the strong inspiration that the artist draws from Etruscan art. From the underground floor to the noble floor, Diego’s works are part of the permanent itinerary, in the continuous dialogue between ancient and contemporary, the identity dimension of our Art Museum”.