Alberto Giacometti, Tête de Simone de Beauvoir de profil, vers 1946, Crayon sur papier 21 x 13,5 cm, Collection Fondation Giacometti

18 Jun 2020

The strength of a head

: Simone de Beauvoir in front of Giacometti
by Thomas Augais
Paris, France
#GiacomettiChezVous

In the heart of Montparnasse, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre met Alberto Giacometti at the Dôme café in 1936, before becoming better acquainted in 1939. Simone de Beauvoir cultivated a friendship with the Giacometti couple that lasted until the artist's death in 1966. So much so that the sculptor became a full-fledged figure in her own work of fiction Le Sang des autres (1945).

Thomas Augais is a lecturer in twentieth-century literature at the University of Paris Sorbonne. His research focuses on the relationship to reality in the dialogue between writers and artists in the twentieth century. He has published "Alberto Giacometti et les écrivains" Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2017 (a work resulting from a thesis defended at the Université Lumière Lyon 2 in 2009). He has also published a critical edition of André du Bouchet's "La peinture n'a jamais existé" (Le bruit du Temps, 2017) and post-faced Nicolas de Staël's Lettres 1926-1955 ("Le bruit du Temps", 2016).

Live: Thursday, June 18 at 5 p.m. (Paris)
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To search for a work, consult the Alberto Giacometti Database