ALBERTO GIACOMETTI (1901-1966). - Lot 49

ALBERTO GIACOMETTI (1901-1966). Greek, large version, the model designed around [1937]. Lamp. Plaster. Early edition from the late 1930s. Height without socket: 47 cm Restoration and cleaning; supervised by the Alberto Giacometti Foundation. Important information This work has been included in the artist's catalog raisonné and referenced in the Alberto Giacometti Database under number AGD 4559 by the Giacometti Foundation. A document from the Giacometti Foundation for the inclusion of this work in the artist's catalog raisonné and its referencing in the Alberto Giacometti Database will be given to the purchaser. Provenance and history : Jean and Violet Henson Collection (1894-1974) (1887-1971). Probably received as a gift from Jean-Michel Frank (cf. Jean Henson, A time for réflexion, éditions Somogy, Paris, 1949, page 194). Bibliography and related works: - Art et Décoration - 1st quarter 1939. An identical model, featured in the salon of Mr. Raymond Patenôtre's villa in Nice, is reproduced on page 6. - Art et Industrie - N° 1 of November 1945. An identical model, with color variation, featured in Jean-Michel Frank's decor for a salon in South America, reproduced on page 19. - Jean-Michel Frank, Adolphe Chanaux: Aux sources du XXe siècle II, Intérieurs - Catalogue of the 1990 exhibition at Galerie Jacques de Vos, Paris, Éditions Galerie Jacques de Vos, Paris, 1990. An identical model, featured in the salon of Mr. Raymond Patenôtre's villa in Nice, is reproduced on page 84. - Léopold Diego Sanchez - Jean-Michel Frank - Éditions du Regard, Paris, 1997. An identical model is reproduced on pages 166-167. - Christian Boutonnet and Rafaël Ortiz - Diego Giacometti - Éditions de l'Amateur and Galerie L'Arc en Seine, Paris, 2003. An identical model is reproduced on pages 31 (plaster with pink patina) and 44 (terracotta with ochre patina). - Pierre-Emmanuel Martin-Vivier - Jean-Michel Frank, l'étrange luxe du rien - Éditions Norma, Paris, 2006. An identical model is reproduced on page 45 (terracotta), page 149; and pages 191 and 346 (black-tinted plaster). - Galerie Vallois - Jean-Michel Frank, Biennale 2006 - Éditions Vallois, Paris, 2006. An identical model is reproduced in this catalog, unpaginated. - Pierre-Emmanuel Martin-Vivier - Jean-Michel Frank: un décorateur dans le Paris des années 30 - Catalogue of the exhibition organized at the Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint-Laurent, Paris (October 2, 2009 - January 3, 2010), Éditions Norma, Paris, 2009. An identical model (terracotta) is reproduced on page 67. Jean and Violet Henson an exceptional couple, an exceptional collection The adventure of twentieth-century art was marked by artists who will forever be remembered, by great art dealers who also left an indelible mark on the period, and by bold, singular and committed collectors who were indispensable links in the evolution and very existence of this unique moment known as the modern era. The turn from the 19th to the 20th century saw writers, poets, composers, painters and sculptors imbued with an immense culture, a new sensibility, a proven virtuosity and an assumed humanism. They delivered works that tended towards the sublime, works that still shake and captivate us today. The inter-war period was populated by leading artists whose erudition had nothing to envy to that of their elders, but for whom history had risen up before them with the Great War and its cohort of horrors, the acceleration of time due to staggering advances in science and technology, and the work and publications of Freud leading to major discoveries about the mechanisms of the psyche. As a result, their creations had to reflect this period of great upheaval, both in bodies and minds, and be filled with the upheavals that people were struggling to assimilate. Similarly, the collectors and art lovers of the 1920s and 1930s had very different profiles to those who had become intoxicated with modernity at the beginning of the 20th century. They had given way to men and women whose lives were akin to works of art. Their lives were a mixture of depth and frivolity, action and idleness, courage and cowardice, light and darkness; in parallel with these paradoxical tendencies, knowledge, an appetite for the modern and, at the same time, melancholy were palpable in everyone, and an instinctive sense of a future plunge into the abyss was evident. Jean and Violet Henson, literal and figurative characters in a novel, were representative of the world of people who gravitated towards art and artists, and who formed this community of collectors without a doubt.