ASHTRAY WITH BIRD
Bronze with green patina
Life-cast
Circa 1983
BIRD
Bronze with green patina
Life-cast
Circa 1975
CARYATIDS
Bronze with golden brown patina
Life-cast
Circa 1975
Signed DIEGO with monogram
CAT BUTLER
Bronze with brown patina
Life-cast
Circa 1975
Signed DIEGO with monogram
DOGS
Bronze with gilt patina
Life-cast
Circa 1965
FOX
Bronze with brown patina
Life-cast
Circa 1975
LION'S HEAD
Bronze with brown patina
Life-cast
Signed DIEGO with monogram
OSTRICH
Bronze with green patina
Life-cast
Circa 1970
Signed DIEGO with monogram
STAG
Bronze with brown patina
Life-cast
Circa 1975
Signed DIEGO with monogram
WOLF
Bronze with brown patina
Life-cast
Circa 1975
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Diego Giacometti (1902 – 1985)
On a winter day in 1925 Diego Giacometti got off the train for the first
time at the Gare de l'Est in Paris. He came to join his elder brother Alberto,
who had been there for three years and was already being noticed for his talent.
Diego neither had the talent nor the ambition to do anything in particular,
and it was only natural for him to do what he had always done since childhood:
help with his brother's work. Modest and very generous by nature, it soon
became apparent that he was gifted with remarkable manual dexterity.
Throughout the thirties the two brothers worked for Jean-Michel Frank, the
most distinguished decorator of the time. They created lamps, vases, sconces,
andirons, candlesticks and other decorative pieces for him, all of which
were designed by Alberto, but the manual labor - making of molds, casts,
polishing and finish - was entirely Diego's.
With time his dexterity improved generating a need for self-expression; it
was as if Diego's hands had a mind of their own with the sole intent of
getting their owner to fulfill himself.
In the mid-thirties, encouraged by his brother, he began to sculpt for his
own pleasure. Right from the start his subjects were mainly animals. All
his life he was fascinated, amused and beloved by animals. In the remote
alpine valley where he grew up there were bears, deer and lynxes in the
forests, horses, cows and goats in the villages, dogs and cats in the houses,
owls in the barns, eagles in the sky; a world that Diego knew better and
preferred to the strange and unpredictable world of humans. When the time
came for him to create his own work, it was through his love for animals,
respect for their integrity and admiration for their shapes that he was best
able, as man and artist, to symbolize his relationship with reality; a vision
of remarkable creativity, nobility and charm.
Diego seriously got started in the early fifties, unassumingly and with certain
misgivings. He produced very little during that time, being too absorbed with
his brother's work. It was only when Alberto deserted him after January 1966
that Diego's hands came to his rescue and allowed him to survive. At first, he
created mostly tables and chairs and little by little these pieces took on a
life of their own through the addition of birds, deer, dogs, cats, frogs, horses,
owls, foxes and mice: a whole menagerie of the imagination, illustrating the
innocence and tenderness with which he perceived the world. The tree, for
example, inhabited by an owl and a lizard, incidentally happens to be a table,
yet the reality of its usefulness as a table adds another dimension of fantasy
and dreamlike finesse to it, as in a child's dream where inert objects are endowed
with their own lives and desires.
He always signed his works DIEGO, never taking advantage of the glory attached
to the family name. However, he could not avoid fame. The young man who had
arrived seventy years ago in the most beautiful city of the world fulfilled
his raison d'être by remaining true to himself.
James Lord
Paris, May 2 1997
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