Appeal: Help us locate 39 drawings by Alberto Giacometti
News about publications | Tuesday, November 15th 2011
Help us locate 39 drawings by Alberto Giacometti as part of the publication project: “Les copies du passé” by Alberto Giacometti and Luigi Carluccio.
First published in Italy by Botero Publishers (Turin) in 1967, just a year after Alberto Giacometti's death, “Le copie del passato” (Copies from the past) is the result of a 6-year long collaboration between the artist and Italian art critic Luigi Carluccio.
After the first Italian issue, Verlag Ernst Scheidegger published a German version of the book in 1968 (“Alberto Giacometti. Begegnung mit der Vergangenheit. Kopien nach alter Kunst”). An English version was simultaneously published by New York editor Harry N. Abrams (“Giacometti. A Sketchbook of Interpretative Drawings”). But the French version of the book, although originally scheduled, was never completed.
As the legatee of the Alberto Giacometti's widow Annette, the Alberto and Annette Giacometti Foundation holds over half of the drawings published in the 1967 edition, as well as its preliminary layouts and designs, and most of the books from which the drawings were copied (as part of the artist’s personal library).
Yet 39 drawings are still to be located.
For this purpose, The Alberto and Annette Giacometti Foundation hereby invites anyone who can provide relevant information for reconstructing these drawings' history to share their knowledge and contact our Publication Project Coordinator Marianna Gelussi: mgelussi[at]foundation-giacometti.fr.
Crucial information on the availability and current location of the 39 missing drawings would enable the Foundation to fulfill their project of a new critical edition of “Le copie del passato” (currently out of print in any of the three existing versions).
This new French edition of “Le copie del passato” will aim at presenting Giacometti's "copies of the past" from a new critical point of view, enabling comparison between the original drawings, their source, and their reproduction in the 1967 book (which was often not entirely faithful to the originals).
The publication will include an analysis by art historian Cecilia Braschi, examining Giacometti's drawn copies while retracing the history of the first publication. Luigi Carluccio's original text “Nei limiti di un limite” (…Within the limits of a limit) will be published for the first time in French, followed by Alberto Giacometti’s famous “Notes sur les copies” (Notes on the copy-interpretations), in their original French version.
The Alberto and Annette Giacometti would like to thank you in advance for any constructive collaboration on this important project.
Alberto Giacometti, [After Michelangelo: Head of "The Dying Slave"], ca 1958, ballpoint pen on a page from the the Bulletin de la Nouvelle Revue Française, 1 june 1958 (Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti Collection, FAAG 1994-1774)
