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DIEGO GIACOMETTI: FURNITURE
Chicago - October 14 through December 21, 2002
Chicago - Richard Gray Gallery, located at 875 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, is pleased to present Diego Giacometti: Furniture, on display from October 14 - December 21, 2002. The exhibition includes ten items from a private collection: coffee tables, console tables, table lamps and a standing lamp. Beautifully proportioned, and cast in bronze with rich patinas, these items span his career, from 1936 to 1984.
Diego Giacometti (1902-1985), younger brother of Alberto Giacometti and son of the Post-Impressionist painter Giovanni Giacometti, was frequently the subject of his brother Alberto's portraits. The two shared a small studio in Paris from their mid twenties, until Alberto's death in 1966. Diego always knew that he would work with his hands, and dreamed of making furniture. Working with decorators Jean-Michel Frank of Paris and Syrie Maugham of London, Giacometti created wall sconces, andirons, lamps, and other items. Later, Diego went on to create sculpture bases and stands for Alberto and other artists. Eventually he received important commissions for furniture, first for the house of Marguerite Maeght, including tables, chairs, railings and a swimming-pool ladder. His outstanding later projects include a commission for lighting fixtures and furniture for the Picasso Museum in Paris, France.
His true talent lay in the correctness of proportions... Diego who went to neither museums nor gallery exhibitions, hit upon antique, eternal forms by instinct, conferring on them a new nobility. His forms are not reminiscences of the past, as some have supposed, these are original creations, occasionally inspired by chance.
(Daniel Marchesseau, Diego Giacometti, New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1986, P.65)
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