MUSEUM OF MODERN ART DUBROVNIK

ALBERTO GIACOMETTI:
SCULPTOR OF THE 20th CENTURY SOUL

in association with the Alberto Giacometti Foundation, Kunsthaus of Zurich

The exhibition is curated by Franziska Lentszch
26 June - 03 October 2010

This exhibition covers the Giacometti prints, lithographic cycle Paris sans fin, drawings, paintings and sculptures, 169 works in all. Along with other works of art, the show presents the sculpture Man Crossing the Square on a Sunny Morning of 1950, forerunner of Walking Man of 1960, artwork that because of the astronomical price it fetched, the highest in the history of the art market, was recently much mentioned even outside the narrow circles of the discipline.

As well as Giacometti’s works, we are showing 18 photographs of Ernst Scheidegger, the well-known Swiss photographer, once a member of the Magnum agency, who was particularly close to the great sculptor and followed him with his camera in many situations of his life and work.

This exhibition is a continuation of the international part of the programme of Museum of Modern Art Dubrovnik, of a series of great events in the last decade (Brightness – the Thyssen-Bornemissa Collection; Dubrovnik Here and Elsewhere – with curator Catherine David; the Jan Fabre exhibitions Umbraculum for Dubrovnik, Le temps emprunté; Pablo Picasso – Prints; American Printmaking since 1960...). This exhibition is the first solo exhibition of Alberto Giacometti in Croatia.

Lenders of art works:
- Foundation Alberto Giacometti, Kunsthaus Zürich
- Bündner Kunstmuseum, Chur
- Neue Zurcher Zeitung, Zürich

The exhibition is made possible by: City of Dubrovnik (patronage of the exhibition), Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia; Pro Helvetia-Swiss arts Council, The Dubrovnik-Neretva County

Sponsors: Hotel Excelsior Dubrovnik (patronage of the exhibition opening), Dubrovnik Airport, Fotostar-Serragli d.o.o., Raiffeisenbank Austria d.d., Libertas Dubrovnik d.o.o., Streettribes, Zagreb, Hotel Argentina Dubrovnik

Media sponsor: EPH-ART, Jutarnji list
 

About the artist
Alberto Giacometti was born in 1901 in Borgonovo, Switzerland. He was first of all trained in the Fine Arts School in Geneva, and in the beginning of 1922 enrolled in the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, class of Antoine Bourdell.

Although he inclined to various movements of the early 20th century, such as Cubism and Surrealism, Giacometti cannot be subsumed under any stylistic idiom or its constraints. With his characteristic stylization of the figure, which he reduced almost to anti-volume, to a mere line, Giacometti achieves a fully individual expression, in which the material pre-text is only a hint for the endorsement of a delicate spirituality. Although he was not apt to give in to pretentious demands that he should be an artistic leader and interpreter of his time, with his obsessive concentration on a few simple motifs of the human figure, he defined the character of the times: anxiety, inquietude, the global tragedy, the tormented soul of the 20th century, which nobody embodied with such organic power as this modest but great man and artist.

While he was still alive Giacometti achieved an international reputation and the status of artist of world importance. He died in 1966 in Chur, Switzerland. 

Exhibition opening

MUSEUM OF MODERN ART DUBROVNIK    
Put Frana Supila 23
HR-20 000 Dubrovnik
tel: +385 20 426 590
fax: +385 20 432 114
www.ugdubrovnik.hr
e-mail: info@ugdubrovnik.hr