Still about Denmark …
The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark has a stunning collection of Alberto Giacometti’s sculptures. This is the third of a series of posts on this wonderful museum, click on the link to see part 1 and part 2.
Alberto Giacometti is a Swiss, Paris-based artist, with sculpting being one of several techniques he practiced. His trademark skinny men and women are powerfully expressive and instantly recognizable.
He died in 1966. His work (L’Homme qui marche I) and his image appears on the blueish 100 Swiss Franc note.
Louisiana placed their collection of AG’s sculptures in a double-height gallery with floor-to-ceiling windows on one side.
L’Homme qui marche I, a life-sized bronze sculpture of a walking man, is the star here.
There are 6 editions of L’Homme qui marche I in total. Edition number 2 became one of the most expensive works of art and the most expensive sculpture ever sold at auction on February 2, 2010, when it sold for £65 million (US$104.3 million) at Sotheby’s, London. In May 2015, AG’s other work L’Homme au doigt surpassed it at a price tag of US$141.3 million.
I found the face unexpectedly expressive.
The gallery is shared with a large Francis Bacon on the wall on the other side. Including a few smaller bust by AG, there must be more than 150 million dollars worth of art in that space.
Apparently, Giacometti would rarely deviate from the three themes that preoccupied him—the walking man; the standing, nude woman; and the bust— or all three, combined in various groupings.
In the 30’s, he was a surrealist but after the war, he began exploring bronze sculptures and his style matured in the 50’s and 60’s – a motif of the suffering human figure a popular symbol of post-war trauma..
It has been said that his style “summed up the philosophy’s interests in perception, alienation and anxiety”.
The walking man is described as “both a humble image of an ordinary man, and a potent symbol of humanity”. Giacometti is said to have viewed “the natural equilibrium of the stride” as a symbol of “man’s own life force”.
Louisiana’s collection is large even from an international perspective, and remarkable in that it shows the breadth of the artist.