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“Le chat II" (The Cat II), 1951. ©Succession Alberto Giacometti. SIAE 2024 Next page, Alberto Giacometti at the Tate Gallery with one of his sculptures, London, July 1965. ©Succession Alberto Giacometti. SIAE 2024 ©Tony Evans/Getty Images
©akg-images/André Held/Mondadori Portfolio

A poetic light that corrodes and torments the essence of things, In the busts, generally portraits of people close to him,
distilling them into a primitive yet strikingly modern mark. This he retains a little of his surrealist spirit – he was fascinated by
light, with its summarising precision, makes substance tremble – Breton’s movement when he was very young – the features are
vibrating like a tuning fork that aligns reality to a frequency: the compressed, the features are concentrated while remaining clear
sound of silence, perhaps the sound of space itself. and descriptive. It is not always diriment to speak of economic
And we are dazzled by it. values, but in this case the exception is a must.
It is impossible not to be impressed by these figures whose In a hypothetical ranking of the 10 most expensive sculptures
apparent fragility is immediately contradicted by their assertive, ever sold at auction, the first three positions belong to Alberto
magnetic presence. Giacometti, his record being over $140 million.
Brave and solitary, witnesses of an ancient future, they The tenth position is also his. This acknowledgement from the
sometimes advance, sometimes point, sometimes stop to stare market does not only mean ‘money’, but tells us that Giacometti
at a point in infinity. An army of characters, human and animal, succeeded in communicating the very meaning of sculpture, his
who in certain circumstances are grappling with objects, also touch, so profound, made a mysterious and neglected sense of
elongated and authoritative. touch visible in art.

40 Art Protagonist