Alberto Giacometti dans le parc d'Eugène Rudier au Vésinet, parmi Les Bourgeois de Calais, automne 1950, Paris, Archives de la Fondation (photo : Patricia Matisse)

10 Apr 2020

Giacometti on Rodin

Live Lecture
by Hugo Daniel
#GiacomettiChezVous

The Fondation Giacometti's research team is offering a series of online lectures, a new format broadcast live.

Alberto Giacometti in Eugène Rudier's park at Le Vésinet, among Les Bourgeois de Calais, Autumn 1950, Paris, Foundation Archives (photo: Patricia Matisse)

Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) and Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) could sometimes seem on their own to sum up the upheaval experienced by sculpture in modern times. This lecture will return to a relationship often assumed but never studied for its own sake. The filiation between the two artists is certain: familiarized at a young age with Rodin's work, Giacometti deepened his knowledge of his work by studying from 1922 at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière with Bourdelle, a former student and assistant of Rodin. Still in 1939, he attended the inauguration of the Monument à Balzac, and in 1950, he posed next to Rodin's works during a visit to Rudier, the founder for both artists. In addition to the biographical link, there is a deep affinity between the two works, sensitive in the importance that both attach to modelling, to certain themes - such as the Man who walks - and to the issues specific to sculpture.

By Hugo Daniel, head of the School of Modernity at the Giacometti Institute and associate curator of the "Rodin - Giacometti" exhibition at the Fundacion MAPFRE (Madrid)
Lecture in French

 

To search for a work, consult the Alberto Giacometti Database