Giacometti portrait exhibition announced after record-breaking sale
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Version 0 of 1. The National Portrait Gallery in London is to stage the first portrait show for an artist whose work ranks as some of the most recognisable of the 20th century. Alberto Giacometti is well known for his tall and spindly sculptural figures. But he is far less well known as a portrait artist – a situation which the gallery hopes to redress with an exhibition opening in October. According to Paul Moorhouse, curator of 20th century portraits at the NPG, the show has been five years in the planning. “Giacometti is one of the giants of 20th century art, one of the giants of modernism, but there is a great deal to be discovered about Giacometti,” he said on Tuesday. The announcement of the show came the morning after a Giacometti work, L’Homme au Doigt (Pointing Man) sold for in New York for $141.3m (£90m), a world record for a sculpture sold at auction. The NPG exhibition will focus on what was a life-long preoccupation with portraiture and feature more than 60 works, including paintings, drawings and sculptures. On display will be portraits of Giacometti’s main models, including his wife, Annette, his wayward brother Diego and his mother. Other sitters range from friends such as Jean Genet to the retailer and philanthropist Lord Sainsbury. The NPG show comes after a long gap in British exhibitions devoted to the Swiss artist. There was a definitive Tate show in 1965, curated by David Sylvester, and a Royal Academy show in 1996. After the NPG there will be a major retrospective at Tate Modern in 2017. There will be many eye catching loans from private and public collections; not least a 1950 work, The Artist’s Mother, from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and Diego Seated from the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich. Moorhouse said the latter work in his view ranks among the “greatest portraits of the 20th century … just extraordinary”. • Giacometti: Pure Presence is at the National Portrait Gallery in London from 15 October to 10 January. |