Fondation Giacometti

Alongside portrait and still life, landscape is the other subject approached early on by Giacometti. He painted in particular the mountains of Stampa, where he was born, and Maloja, where his family owned a house, following the example of his father Giovanni, of Cuno Amiet and, above all, of Hodler, who had painted many mountain landscapes in the same region in Switzerland. In the case of this painting, the little houses almost stylised in the valley at the foot of the mountains, are probably those of Maloja. The chromatic pursuit of that landscape shows the influence of German and Swiss pleinairism; the light in the background evokes some sunsets painted by Hodler. As for other paintings from his youth, Giacometti has visibly prepared before painting a drawing with a red and blue brush, where one notices the importance of drawing for the young artist even when he started to paint. As he did in many drawings of the same period, Giacometti drew around the image – and with the same red used for the preparatory drawing – a frame that marks out the field of his canvas. It was a habit that Giacometti maintained in the paintings of his mature years, where the demarcation filled a more and more obvious role in the definition of a space of representation, distinct from the physical space of the painting. This painting, dating from around 1920, does not seem to have been exhibited in Giacometti’s lifetime.

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Annette GIACOMETTI
Succession Alberto et Annette Giacometti
Fondation Giacometti

2016 Alberto Giacometti retrospective at Yuz Museum, Shanghai (China), The Shanghai Yuz Museum, from March 22nd to July 31st 2016
2021 Giacometti-Segantini-Amiet-Hodler, La Montagne fertile., Evian (France), Palais Lumière, from February 27th to May 30th 2021
2022 Giacometti tournée USA 1, Cleveland (United States Of America), Cleveland Museum of Art, from March 12th to June 12th 2022