Fondation Giacometti

Annette Arm was born on October 28th 1923 in Pregny, near Geneva. After taking a secretarial course, she worked at the Red Cross during the Second World War. This was when she met Alberto Giacometti — a refugee in Switzerland since January 1942 - in a brasserie. In July 1946, she joined him in Paris, and they were married in 1949. Up until Alberto’s death in 1966, Annette was his main female model.

The couple had no children, so Annette Giacometti became the sole usufructuary of her husband’s rights and copyright, and was entrusted with the task of organizing the management and protection of her husband’s work. Annette Giacometti immediately got down to the job of preparing a complete database of her husband’s authentic works. She gathered documentation and information about how his works were made, and their location.

Meanwhile, Annette Giacometti embarked on a fight against the counterfeiting of her husband’s works. She fought tirelessly to have the ever-growing number of fakes seized. When she died in Paris on September 19th 1993, she had 50 fake works in her possession. In order to carry on this twofold mission — documenting and protecting the work — Annette Giacometti was keen to create a foundation to accommodate her archives and collections.

From 1966 to 1993, Annette Giacometti devoted her whole life to the defense of her husband's œuvre, never speaking to the media about it.