Fondation Giacometti

This bronze chandelier with a golden brown patina was probably made just after the war. It is mentioned in a letter from Diego Giacometti to his brother Alberto on 1st April 1949. Part of an important set comprising four wall lights, this ceiling lamp has rather imposing proportions (185 centimetres in diameter). Suspended from the ceiling on a chain, it is made at its centre of a block with an hexagonal section (polyhedron with 18 sides) from which six “branches” extend with an hexagonal section too, with a vibrant surface whose extremity gets thinner and is terminated by two small leaves. Each branch is capped by a “flower” made of several bronze leaves gathered at their base. The six bouquets of flowers are equipped to receive an electric bulb. A bunch of leaves is suspended from the polyhedron and completes the composition. This chandelier belonged to the art publisher Louis Broder, with whom Giacometti worked. Works by Alberto Giacometti illustrate, among others, books by Paul Eluard (Un poème dans chaque livre) and René Crevel (Feuilles éparses), published by Broder in 1956 and 1965. Alberto Giacometti created other decorative arts objects for Louis Broder, particularly a chandelier for his bookshop-gallery. Alberto Giacometti had already created chandeliers, ceiling lamps and wall lights for the interior designer Jean-Michel Frank in the Thirties, especially a pair of chandeliers made in 1939 for a wealthy Argentinean client of Jean-Michel Frank, which used the same vegetal formal vocabulary but on a surrealist mode. In his production after the war, the artist, except on rare occasion, only made pieces of decorative arts on commission, which were not made into editions.

No inscription

Louis BRODER