Diego Giacometti

Diego Giacometti , born in 1902 and died in 1985, is a Sculpteur and " designer" Swiss, younger brother of Alberto Giacometti.

Years of youth

Diego Giacometti was born in Suisse, in Borgonovo in 1902, village close to the Italian border in the valley of Bregaglia, and deceased in 1985. Wire of the painter Giovanni Giacometti, brother of Alberto Giacometti, it grows in a family atmosphere protected, cordial and convivial among the animals of their farm. In 1904, the family is established with Stampa, in the Canton of the Grisons.

After studies of trade to Basle and Saint-Gall, it joined at twenty-five years, on the councils of its mother Annetta, her Alberto brother with Paris. Alberto Giacometti is then raises of the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle with the academy of the Large Thatched cottage. The three Giacometti wire are directed towards the visual arts: Alberto and Diego towards painting and the sculpture, and Bruno towards architecture.

Alberto and Diego

The cooperation of Diego with Alberto was so close that it is sometimes difficult to dissociate the work of Diego of that of Alberto, thirteen months its elder, each one showing a great dexterity in the realization of its own works. The Giacometti brothers will preserve the same workshop of sculptor, 46, rue Hippolyte-Maindron, with Paris, until the end of their life and will carry out the orders of easy customers, refined and cultivated like the Maeght or the Noailles.

It is during the war that Diego Giacometti carried out its first sculptures of animals; they will decorate its pieces of furniture regularly, as the Table tree with the mouse which belonged to the collection of professor Jean-Paul Binet, eminent surgeon, patron and large friendly and inspirer of Diego Giacometti. Its fascination for the animal kingdom is related to the mythological and oneiric universe of its childhood.

The work of Diego Giacometti

Its sculptures are sometimes related to a motivation picturesque or amusing.

the Ostrich for example owes its existence with the fact that a friend of Diego, Doctor Binet, not knowing what to make make of an egg of ostrich, entrusted it to Diego which naturally integrated it inside an ostrich imagined by him. Animalist art being extremely rich, Diego Giacometti likes to represent at the sides of the more familiar animals, the animals which symbolize the force, the power, the beauty, such its heads of lion, of wolf, or the horse.

It uses bronze, a material which makes it possible to work its subject with meticulousness, this thanks to its elasticity. These animals require a specific cast iron technique, often expensive like the technique with the lost Cire. The desire to join again with the high-quality of the best productions of the past will encourage that which was called the ace of the patinas to contribute throughout its life to celebrate the animals with this dexterity which made its fame.

After the disappearance of Alberto, in 1966, Diego redouble work, completing important work for decorators of reputation like Georges Geoffroy, Henri Samuel, or of the whole in exceptional public places, the Fondation Maeght with Saint-Paul-with-Vence, the Musée Chagall with Nice, or the monumental ordering of the Musée Picasso with Paris. It is not that starting from the death of Alberto knows the celebrity. In the Barber of September 13rd, 2007, Patrick Grainville comments on this late notoriety thus: “It is Adam of an Eden of familiar animals, vegetable imaginations which it carves and which one will fully recognize poetry only after the death of the elder one. ”

It was to disappear in July 1985.

the main Cat of hotel was ordered by Aimé Maeght to give to eat with the birds in a birdcage within its foundation with Saint-Paul-with-Vence. Alberto Giacometti drew profile and of face cat-like and Diego carved it, confirmation if need be close cooperation between the two brothers. the Library known as In Mexico is named thus because it is indeed with the Mexico.

Some of its works

Two consoles and two armchairs , Museum Tavet-Delacour, with Pontoise.

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