Bust Of Diego

Diego Giacometti posed to his older brother Alberto for over 40 years. The age difference of the brothers - only one year. They came together to Paris, rented a Studio in Montparnasse, then a poor quarter for the hungry, dreaming about the glory of the artists. From the evening till 3-4 am, Alberto molded clay sculptures, Diego woke up early and cast in plaster that had per night to do brother. Then made the armature for a new sculpture of his brother, later made castings of bronze and platinized. Until Alberto comes up with puzzling surrealist sculpture (1, 2), which are not sold Diego looking for customers to feed himself and his brother. First money orders they perform together: floor lamps anddecorative sculptures for homes of bankers and bourgeois.

Only in 50-ies, when he is already 50, Diego begins sometimes to work alone. In his spare time, when not busy with work brother, and when not posing for him. Diego is not interested in the people he sculpts animals. Françoise Francisco, a friend and author of books on Diego Giacometti, told a touching story about how he fed not only birds, saletovic in his yard, but mice that were nosing around the workshop. He lived two cats and even a Fox. "After the war one of his friends came back from Auschwitz with a Fox. He kept her on a chain. "How can you do this: you yourself were a prisoner," said Diego and picked her up. He called the Fox miss rose. And she stank unbearably and dug holes everywhere"- says françoise Francisco.

Really Diego was only interested in animals and furniture. He started pouring tables and chairs made of bronze and to put on the tiny owls, mice, frogs and deer. Axis, the legs and the backs of his furniture walking animals, nests of birds. Furniture Diego is becoming incredibly popular. He is never disappointed or desperate, it does not cover panic attacks and a feeling of worthlessness, as is often the case with Alberto. If he doesn't like something, he just starts over.

When in 1982, just before the first curator Museum of Pablo Picasso in Paris the task was to connect somehow the classic architecture of the hotel sale and cubist paintings that was supposed to be, the first thing he remembered Diego Giacometti. Diego was commissioned to create the interior for Museum, warm and real, who would be able to combine the incompatible and reconcile the premise with the display. After three years at the Picasso Museum appeared bronze benches, tables, chairs, and incredible lighting. Strict geometric forms combined with live plant and animal elements. Diego finished the job, but didn't get to see their furniture in the opened Museum. He died before that.

Alberto Giacometti wrote Diego and sculpted busts of his life. Since the first of the impressionistic portrait where Diego is only 16 years old. To the last, flat, thinned to a dangerous busts. Giacometti sculpts the head, as if she only has her profile, almost flat, like a bas-relief without reason. He finds in this method, in this masterfully-primitive technique of a long-awaited own realism. "When I look at the figure front, I can't imagine it on the side and rear. When I look at her in profile, I forget what she looks like full face. Thus, it is very difficult to see the object in space. This means that inherently Western or Greco-Roman sculpture that wants to sculpt the head as it is, is really abstract and complex. And Negro sculpture, with its large flat head demonstrates the correct view of the world"- said Giacometti in an interview.

He is not interested in the idiosyncrasies or nuances of the mood of the model. He loved to repeat that just models the head, no more. Giacometti was only secured the presence of a person in the world, made immortal what by nature is impermanent. Constantly working on the portraits and busts of relatives (brother, wife), saved them from extinction.

Author: Anna Sidelnikova