In a letter by Alberto Giacometti to his New York dealer and friend Pierre Matisse (1947) that accompanied a group of sculptures planned for an exhibition at Matisse’s gallery, the artist wrote “Here is the list of sculptures that I promised you” Giacometti wrote, “but I could not send it without explaining a certain succession of facts […] without which it would make no sense”. What followed these words is a fascinating account of Giacometti’s thoughts on sculpture; a testimony of his relentless pursuit to express truth in his work in a manner that is not limited to mere external resemblance. It was in this decade that Giacometti adopted the retreat to memory that is now considered so fundamental to his oeuvre.

 

Giacometti’s letter reveals how this period was marked by a deep personal and stylistic crisis, which gradually led him to withdraw from traditional sculptural techniques and to experiment with Primitivism, Cubism, and Surrealism. This catalogue of the exhibition held at Luxembourg & Dayan, London, in 2016, brings together a rare corpus of plaster, bronze, and wood sculptures that reconstitutes the importance of this particularly exciting period in Giacometti’s life, including seminal works such as Sans Titre (Tête), 1926, Femme Couchée, 1929, and Objet Désagréable, 1931.

 

The illustrated catalogue includes a reprint of Giacometti's letter to Matisse and an essay by art historian Casimiro di Crescenzo.