Making the most of the two hour lunch break from work, last week I popped in to the Fundación Mapfre's current exhibition on Alberto Giacometti, one of my favourite sculptors. Giacometti: Terrenos de juego ("playing fields" or "game boards") focuses on the artist's interest in the concept of space, culminating in his famous large-scale sculptures for the Chase Manhattan Plaza Project, the Walking Man and Large Woman.
Spread over two floors, the exhibition begins with Giacometti's early surrealist sculptures and drawings, which were often designed to resemble the boards from board games, so that the space around the pieces was as important as the pieces themselves. These developed into plans for enormous public squares, where the observers are physically incorporated into the sculpture itself.
My favourite exhibits in the rooms of his earlier work were the series of black and white photographs taken of Giacometti in his studio by other artists, including Man Ray, Ernst Scheidegger and Henri Cartier-Bresson, which were beautiful pieces of art in their own right.
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| The Glade, 1950 |
Spread over two floors, the exhibition begins with Giacometti's early surrealist sculptures and drawings, which were often designed to resemble the boards from board games, so that the space around the pieces was as important as the pieces themselves. These developed into plans for enormous public squares, where the observers are physically incorporated into the sculpture itself.
My favourite exhibits in the rooms of his earlier work were the series of black and white photographs taken of Giacometti in his studio by other artists, including Man Ray, Ernst Scheidegger and Henri Cartier-Bresson, which were beautiful pieces of art in their own right.
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| Ernst Scheidegger, 2010 |
The second floor showcases the groupings of stretched, fragile and coarse figures for which he is best known.
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| Three Men Walking, 1948 |
The exhibition focuses on the evolution of Giacometti's studio space alongside the drawings and sculptures, which was an interesting touch, even creating a representation of the tiny space by blowing up one of Giacometti's own drawings of his surroundings and wallpapering a room with it.
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| Large Woman II, 1960 |
The works gradually lead up to his most famous legacy: exploring how his idol-like nude sculptures of women culminated in the Large Woman, and how his portrait drawings and sculptures of his brother became the Male Head and the Walking Man.
They're free-standing on the gallery floor, allowing you to interact with them and making you notice the spaces between them, just as was originally intended.
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| Walking Man I, 1960 |
Until 4 August 2013
