The Women of Giacometti, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas

The Women of Giacometti
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas
January 14 - April 2006

The Nasher Sculpture Center presents The Women of Giacometti, the first Alberto Giacometti exhibition presented in Dallas since 1979. The Women of Giacometti features 48 works, including 34 sculptures and 14 paintings, which explore the artist’s long-standing fascination with the female subject, from his mother, sister, and wife to various models. The works range from very early naturalistic portraits, to Surrealist-inspired and Cubist-influenced works from the 1920s and 1930s, to Alberto Giacometti’s well-known tall and slender figures including all nine cast bronze Women of Venice (Femmes de Venise) from 1956, on view together for the first time in the United States since the landmark 1958 Giacometti exhibition at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York.

Alberto Giacometti (b. 1901 Switzerland – d. 1966 Switzerland) worked as a youth in the studio of his father, the painter Giovanni Giacometti, and studied briefly at art school in Geneva before moving to Paris in 1922 to pursue his career. By age 12 he had completed the first portrait drawings of his mother, Annetta, who would continue throughout her life to play a key role in his art, and at 14 produced his first sculpture, a bust of his brother Diego.  His sister Ottilia also appeared in numerous early works.

Even as Alberto Giacometti began to absorb the strong influences of Cubism and Surrealism in Paris, he continued to work in a figurative vein, as seen in the exhibition in a plaster Head of Ottilia from c. 1926 and the plaster and bronze heads of Flora Mayo, an American art student with whom Giacometti had a tumultuous affair. Such outstanding monuments of Alberto Giacometti’s Surrealist period as Spoon Woman, Reclining Woman Who Dreams, and Woman with her Throat Cut, with their primitivized and fetishistic approach to female anatomy, date from the late 20s and early 30s.  Stylistic change soon followed, and the two heads of Rita from 1935-38 and three portraits of Isabel from 1937-39 show Giacometti’s return to the investigation of human physiognomy. Rita Gueyfier was a hired model, and Isabel Nicholas Delmer was an English model, sometime art student, and familiar figure in the Parisian art world with whom Giacometti lived briefly. 

When Alberto Giacometti returned to Switzerland in 1942 to escape the German Occupation, he made the acquaintance of Annette Arm, who joined him in Paris after the war. They were married in 1949.  For 20 years, Annette played a crucial role in his life as companion and muse and is depicted regularly in his post-war signature explorations of fragile, elongated, elusive figuration.

Caroline Poiraudeau came into Alberto Giacometti’s life in 1959. Her wild and defiant character held a strange fascination for him, and she soon became both lover and model for a lengthy series of highly expressive paintings and busts. The portrait Caroline in Tears shows the frontal and symmetrical Egyptian pose, loose brushwork combined with sharp linear rendering of head and features, and intense personal examination that characterize many of his later paintings.  Often in these late works, individuality gives way to a generalized, iconic vision of woman as mysterious life force.

The work of Alberto Giacometti has long been of interest to Raymond and Patsy Nasher, and the Nasher collection now encompasses 13 sculptures, two paintings, and one drawing. Several of these are in the exhibition plus masterpieces spanning the artist’s career, such as Spoon Woman (1926, cast 1954), Woman with Her Throat Cut (1932), Tall Figure (1947), and The Glade (1950).

“It is an honor to present so many outstanding works by this great master of modern art at the Nasher Sculpture Center,” said Raymond Nasher. “The show directly complements and expands upon the many other Giacomettis in our collection.”

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with essays by Véronique Wiesinger, Director of the Alberto and Annette Giacometti Foundation in Paris, and Paola Caròla, a friend and model of Giacometti whose portrait bust is in the exhibition.

“Our show contains a number of works that have rarely or never been publicly exhibited before,” said Director Steven Nash. “These objects and the two catalogue essays help advance our knowledge of Giacometti, whose biography has sometimes proven as elusive as the meanings behind his evocative figures.”

The Nasher Sculpture Center’s display of The Women of Giacometti is presented by Chase. The exhibition was made possible with the help of several generous loans from the Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti, private collectors, and institutions including: the Alberto Giacometti Foundation, Zurich; The Beyeler Foundation, Basel; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice; and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

Before the Nasher Sculpture Center, the exhibition was presented at the PaceWildenstein gallery in New York from October 28 to December 17, 2005.

NASHER SCULPTURE CENTER
2001 Flora Street, Dallas, TX 75201
www.nashersculpturecenter.org

David Smith, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas - Drawing and Sculpting

David Smith: Drawing and Sculpting
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas
April 16 - July 17, 2005

The Nasher Sculpture Center presents David Smith: Drawing and Sculpting. Co-organized by the Nasher Sculpture Center and the David Smith Estate, the exhibition assembles approximately fifteen seminal sculptures and seventy major drawings and paintings from the Nasher Collection, the David Smith Estate, and other public and private collections. Featuring many works that have never been publicly displayed before, the exhibition illustrates not only the range and quality of David Smith’s work as a draftsman, but also the complex ways that his drawings and paintings inform his three-dimensional work.

David Smith has long been recognized as one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century. His protean career single-handedly brought new maturity and international ambition to American sculpture. Forty years after his death, his works still astonish in their variety, technical mastery and brawny creative energy. So powerful is David Smith’s legacy as a sculptor, however, that other, highly accomplished aspects of his art exist in a shadowy realm of limited acknowledgement and investigation. Such is the case with his drawings.

David Smith drew regularly throughout his career for many different reasons: to make notes, plan sculptures, jot down observations, explore graphic techniques, relax, and make beautiful, independent works of art. His vast output of works on paper provides a telling record of his visual thought and experimentation and in themselves represent a great aesthetic accomplishment. But they have never received the recognition they deserve. David Smith: Drawing and Sculpting focuses on David Smith’s history and talents as a draftsman and explore the fascinating interaction between his drawings, paintings, and sculptures. Works exhibited span from David Smith’s early development in the 1930s under the influence of European modernism to the powerful and evocative constructions in iron and steel from his maturity, and the drawings that accompanied them.

“This is one of the few exhibitions ever mounted to examine the interactions between Smith’s work in different media,” said Dr. Steve Nash, Director of the Nasher Sculpture Center. “We want to spotlight the power and beauty of Smith’s drawings and also contribute to the understanding of his working methods. It will be a pleasure and honor to exhibit in Dallas so many outstanding works by this great artist.”

Two special public programs are offered to Center guests in conjunction with the exhibition. First, a 28-minute film, David Smith: American Sculptor, 1906-1965, is showing continuously in a viewing room adjacent to the exhibition. David Smith’s ideas about art and his methods are revealed in archival footage of the artist, through reminiscences of the sculptor by his daughters, and by fellow artists Helen Frankenthaler and the late Robert Motherwell.

Secondly, on Thursday, May 5 at 7 p.m., Candida Smith, daughter of the artist and representative of The Estate of David Smith, and Peter Stevens, Executive Director of The Estate of David Smith will present illustrated lectures entitled Remembering David Smith. Following the presentations, Nash will moderate an informal discussion including audience participation.

Steve Nash and Candida Smith are co-curators for the exhibition. Both are contributing essays to the show’s catalogue, which features full-page illustrations of all works in the show, many historical photographs of David Smith and his art and studio, and a compendium of statements by Smith on drawing.

NASHER SCULPTURE CENTER
2001 Flora Street, Dallas, TX 75201
www.nashersculpturecenter.org

Medardo Rosso, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas

Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas
April 3 - June 20, 2004

The Nasher Sculpture Center presents Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions. This exhibition is the first major survey in the United States in 40 years devoted to the work of Medardo Rosso (1858–1928), whose revolutionary innovations played a key role in the birth of modern sculpture. Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions features 20 sculptures, including 6 works from the Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection, and offers an intimate exploration of Metardo Rosso’s working process and innovations. 

Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions focuses on multiple versions of five sculptures spanning Medardo Rosso’s mature career. The works are Aetas aurea (The Golden Age), 1886–87; Grande rieuse (Large Laughing Woman), 1891; Bambino ebreo (Jewish Boy), c. 1892–93; Bookmaker, c. 1894; and Ecce puer (Behold the Child), 1906. Each of the works is represented by three or four distinct castings in wax, plaster, and bronze, showcasing Rosso’s pioneering experimentation with materials and casting techniques. Medardo Rosso was intimately involved in creating the various casts of these works at a time when such work was commonly left to foundry technicians.

Medardo Rosso’s extensive exploration of techniques and materials exemplifies how art was transformed on a broad scale during the late 19th century. Medardo Rosso replaced realistic detail with vigorous, sketchy modeling, and he varied media. Rather than cast his original clay models as bronzes to be carefully finished, Rosso arrested the lost-wax method of bronze casting in midcourse, saving the wax shells as finished works. This radical innovation, which elevated wax to the status of bronze, triggered a career-long exploration of sculptural production and reproduction.  Rosso wrung endless variations from his original clay models, casting and recasting them in wax, plaster, and barely finished bronze, leaving the accidents and artifacts of the casting process visible in the final products. Through his experiments, similar to those of Auguste Rodin during the same period, Rosso expanded the conceptual and expressive possibilities of sculpture and influenced the works of such modern sculptors as Umberto Boccioni and Constantin Brancusi.

“With six sculptures by Medardo Rosso in the Nasher Collection, the Nasher Sculpture Center is an ideal venue for this important exhibition,” said Director Steven Nash.  “Like the Picasso exhibition currently on view at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions is a very focused, important exhibition that draws from and complements works in the Nasher Sculpture Center.”

Medardo Rosso’s output comprises fewer than 50 primary sculptures, all of which he created between 1881 and 1906.  For the remaining 22 years of his career, Medardo Rosso devoted himself to recasting these primary sculptures, producing more than 400 variations in plaster, wax, and bronze. Medardo Rosso’s working process and experimentation can be studied in the variations of Bambino ebreo (Jewish Boy), c. 1892–93. Bambino ebreo served as a sort of business card for Medardo Rosso. He made many wax versions of it and gave them as gifts to patrons, critics, curators, and friends. The two wax versions in the exhibition reveal very different degrees of detail. The two bronze versions are even farther apart; one reveals Medardo Rosso’s almost painterly use of the whitish casting material, while the other is traditional in its finish and patina.

The exhibition also includes three versions of one of the largest busts Medardo Rosso ever made, Grande rieuse (Large Laughing Woman), 1891, demonstrating the variety he achieved by casting the same model in different ways. In the bronze version, Medardo Rosso took the unusual step of casting the plaster madreforma, or “mother mold,” as part of the finished work.

MEDARDO ROSSO (1858–1928)

Born in Turin, Italy in 1858, Medardo Rosso moved with his family to Milan when he was 12. After serving in the Italian military, he began studying painting and sculpture at the Brera Academy in Milan in 1882. Medardo Rosso’s artistic breakthrough came in 1883 when he made his first sculptures in wax. In 1889 he settled in Paris, where he developed a friendship with Auguste Rodin. Medardo Rosso exhibited his work widely in Europe and participated in the Exposition Universelle of 1889 in Paris. He also participated in Salons in Paris in 1904 and in London in 1906, where he completed his last sculpture, Ecce puer (Behold the Child).

A fully illustrated catalogue developed by Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum and co-published with Yale University Press accompanies the exhibition. It includes essays by Harry Cooper; Sharon Hecker; Henry Lie, director of the Straus Center for Conservation at Harvard; and Derek Pullen, head of sculpture conservation at the Tate in London.

Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions

164 pages, 8x10 in., 2003

107 color and 5 b&w illustrations

Published by the Harvard University Art Museums

Distributed by Yale University Press

ISBN 1-891771-31-0

Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions is organized by Harry Cooper, curator of modern art for Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum, with Sharon Hecker, an independent scholar based in Milan.

The exhibition was organized by the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums. The Nasher Sculpture Center is the final venue for Medardo Rosso:  Second Impressions, following exhibitions at Harvard’s Arthur M. Sackler Museum (July 19 - October 26, 2003) and the Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, Missouri (November 21, 2003 - February 15, 2004).

NASHER SCULPTURE CENTER
2001 Flora Street, Dallas, TX 75201
www.nashersculpturecenter.org