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Lot Essay
As a young man, Diego Giacometti had travelled from his native Switzerland to Paris to collaborate with the renowned interior designer Jean-Michel Frank. Frank introduced him to fashion legends including Elsa Schiaparelli, Coco Chanel and Hélène Rochas. It was here that Giacometti met Gustav Zumsteg, a textile designer who supplied silks to Christian Dior, Yves Saint Laurent and Hubert de Givenchy. It was in these circles that the first owner of this lamp, Serge Matta, was sure to have been introduced to the work of Giacometti. Serge Matta, the brother of Surrealist artist, Roberto Matta, was a fashion designer based in Paris, who as well as designing for his own label, designed for Elsa Schiaparelli, Jacques Fath, Charles Jourdan and cosmetics pioneer Helena Rubinstein. Lampadaire aux trois oiseaux is part of a large suite of furniture and decorative lighting that was commissioned from Diego Giacometti by Matta in 1975 for the interior of his home in Milly-La-Forêt, in the same way Givenchy would use the artist to design the interior of his Chateau de Jonchet in the Loire Valley. The Giacometti collection of Matta has since been dispersed. A selection of pieces were recently offered at a sale in New York on 15 November 2016. A pair of smaller table lamps reached $732,500, while the partner piece of the present lamp reached $588,500. Original correspondence from the Pierre Matisse gallery and from Serge Matta accompanies the present work.
The jovial animal silhouettes and twisting flora that we see within Diego Giacometti’s bronze furniture show the influence that the mythological and dreamlike world of his countryside childhood had on his creativity. Born in the small Swiss alpine village of Borgonovo, Diego Giacometti was immediately immersed into a world of nature, animals and landscape. Diego spent much of his childhood exploring the local area making plaster models of the wildlife that surrounded him; both on the family farm and in the neighbouring Grisons Mountains, where the Giacometti family moved a few years after his birth. Continually moulding and reworking the plaster, Diego would give energy and importance to the everyday farmyard animals and a sense of wildness and wonder to the creatures living in the forests.
Diego’s fascination with the natural world and animal kingdom expanded past the farmyard walls and mountain passes to cover a variety of characters. Humorous narratives are witnessed throughout his works, as seen in Lampadaire aux trois oiseaux (lot 511) where under the lamp shade, the birds standing on a leaf clearly express the fun and enjoyment which Diego had in sculpting them. Foliage-like joins, textures in the feet of Grande table Torsade (Lot 510) or the purity of Grande Table Grecque (Lot 509) reflect an Art Nouveau appreciation of the beauty of the natural form.
Sharing a studio in Paris with his brother Alberto, their working relationship was so close that it is, at times, difficult to distinguish between the two. But it was only after the death of Alberto in 1966 that Diego became celebrated in his own right, producing commissions for such distinguished patrons as the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, the Chagall Museum in Nice, and the Picasso Museum in Paris as well as a loyal following of affluent collectors and friends who bought pieces, such as the present lots, directly from the artist’s studio.
The jovial animal silhouettes and twisting flora that we see within Diego Giacometti’s bronze furniture show the influence that the mythological and dreamlike world of his countryside childhood had on his creativity. Born in the small Swiss alpine village of Borgonovo, Diego Giacometti was immediately immersed into a world of nature, animals and landscape. Diego spent much of his childhood exploring the local area making plaster models of the wildlife that surrounded him; both on the family farm and in the neighbouring Grisons Mountains, where the Giacometti family moved a few years after his birth. Continually moulding and reworking the plaster, Diego would give energy and importance to the everyday farmyard animals and a sense of wildness and wonder to the creatures living in the forests.
Diego’s fascination with the natural world and animal kingdom expanded past the farmyard walls and mountain passes to cover a variety of characters. Humorous narratives are witnessed throughout his works, as seen in Lampadaire aux trois oiseaux (lot 511) where under the lamp shade, the birds standing on a leaf clearly express the fun and enjoyment which Diego had in sculpting them. Foliage-like joins, textures in the feet of Grande table Torsade (Lot 510) or the purity of Grande Table Grecque (Lot 509) reflect an Art Nouveau appreciation of the beauty of the natural form.
Sharing a studio in Paris with his brother Alberto, their working relationship was so close that it is, at times, difficult to distinguish between the two. But it was only after the death of Alberto in 1966 that Diego became celebrated in his own right, producing commissions for such distinguished patrons as the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, the Chagall Museum in Nice, and the Picasso Museum in Paris as well as a loyal following of affluent collectors and friends who bought pieces, such as the present lots, directly from the artist’s studio.