Fondation Giacometti

The figure floor lamp, also called head floor lamp, was created by Alberto Giacometti for the interior designer Jean-Michel Frank (1895-1941) around 1933-1934, then cast in a bronze edition. It is emblematic of the production of decorative arts objects that the artist created for Jean-Michel Frank and that decorated numerous interiors. It is composed, at its tip, of an androgynous head with stylised shoulders; under this bust, the shaft becomes refined to become thicker after, and thinner towards three bands. At the same time, Alberto Giacometti also used this model of the androgynous head with stylised shoulders for a lamp. This refined classical shape was perfectly suited to the bare settings Jean-Michel Frank used to conceive for his wealthy clients like the banker André Meyer or the fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli. Waldemar George, in his article “Jean-Michel Frank, vers un classicisme vivant”, published in the March 1936 issue of the magazine Art et Décoration, declared that the “bronze floor lamps adorned with women’s heads […] evoke excavated objects. Giacometti has the antique under his skin”. The figure floor lamp is among Alberto Giacometti’s objects whose production was continued after the Second World War. In 1948, in a letter to his dealer Pierre Matisse, Alberto Giacometti proposed this floor lamp, which he called then “head floor lamp”, among other decorative arts objects he could offer him (Pierre Matisse Gallery archives, The Morgan Library, New York). At the same time, the designer Jacques Adnet, from the Compagnie des Arts Français, also distributed this floor lamp to furnish his interiors. From the middle of the Fifties, Giacometti entrusted the edition of this floor lamp to his brother Diego. The bronzes, drawn from the master-model created in the Thirties, the only ones to respect the original model created by the artist were cast from 1962 at the Susse foundry. The Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris is today the keeper of the master-model.

Monogrammed and numbered on the back of the stand "AG 02"

Private collection