Jacques Monory and The Giacometti at the Maeght Foundation

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In 2020, the Fondation Maeght will present two exceptional exhibitions of artists in its collection, entrusted to guest curators.In the spring, the artist Jacques Monory will be honored from 28 March to 14 June, with his first major monographic exhibition since his death in October 2018. This exhibition revisits sixty years of the career of the most narrative member of the Figuration Narrative movement.Starting in the summer, from 27 June to 22 November 2020, the Fondation Maeght will propose a unique event in France with the “The Giacometti” exhibition, which will highlight the famous family of artists from the Swiss village of Stampa. Starting with Alberto Giacometti, the most famous member of the family, known for his emblematic threadlike sculptures, the public will be able to discover the work of his father, Giovanni, and his cousin, Augusto, both painters, as well as his two brothers, Diego, the middle brother, sculptor and designer, and Bruno, the youngest brother, architect. This exhibition will give an original overview of this artistic dynasty.  
JACQUES MONORY28 MARCH – 14 JUNE 2020 
Guest curator: Laurence d’Ist, art historian, author and exhibition curator.
 
Death Valley n°1, 1974.Oil on canvas and sensitized canvas (engraving, Knight, Death and the Devil, Albrecht Dürer), 170 x 490 cm.

From 28 March to 14 June 2020, the Fondation Maeght is presenting the first monographic exhibition dedicated to Jacques Monory since his death in 2018, thus paying tribute to him. Simply entitled “Jacques Monory”, the exhibition presents sixty years of his career and revisits the work of this major Figuration Narrative artist, in constant tension between modernity and the singularity of the blue that made him famous. Organized by Laurence d’Ist, curator of the exhibition, this overview follows a non-chronological path that attempts, from one room to the next, to make the most of the echoes of and deviations from this singular work that deserves revisiting. 
Out of all the Figuration Narrative painters, Monory was no doubt the only one to be fully narrative. Sometimes hyperrealist, the enigmatic scenes that he painted and juxtaposed to form a sort of haunted diary of a painter who questioned the world’s reality every day. The blue that made him famous, whether monochrome or with other colors in the spectrum, is the color of this doubt. It acts as a dreamlike veil and establishes a certain distance. 
 
La Voleuse n°1, 1985.Oil on canvas, 170 x 340 cm.
Couleur n° 1, 2002.Oil on canvas, cinema poster for “Gun Crazy” by J.H. Lewis and Plexiglas, 160 x 300 cm.
 Borrowing from the cinema – and notably the thrillers of the 1950s – as well as from photography and imaging, Monory’s painting, frequently in large formats and often including objects, forms a sort of accelerated carrousel, sometimes with nearly ecstatic stasis: urban landscapes and wide expanses of nature, romantic visions and dramatic images from the news or contemporary history alternate with each other or come together. Fundamental pessimism, tinted with dark humor, coexists with a fascination for the void.Monory does not give any lessons, he questions himself and he questions us: how do we live in a violent, unreasonable, illogical, surprising and often fake world? His painting, which reflects a modernity whose violence he conjures up by letting it run wild, comes back to us today like a slap upside the head, like a very long film from which we would like to be able to isolate each frame while letting ourselves get swept away by the power of his merciless editing.
  Photo credits : Augustin de Valence / Claude Germain – Archives Fondation Maeght. © Jacques Monory / Adagp Paris 2019-2020.
   THE GIACOMETTI27 JUNE – 22 NOVEMBER 2020 
Guest curator: Peter Knapp, a multidisciplinary artist (photography, graphic artist, painter, filmmaker and videographer), artistic director of the collection of books entitled “Contemporain” published by the Centre Georges Pompidou, and co-author of three books on Alberto Giacometti, including “The Five Giacometti”.  

Giovanni Giacometti, Il Balcone, ca 1915-1916.Oil on canvas, 40 x 40 cm.Augusto Giacometti, Fantaisie chromatique, 1914.Oil on canvas, 99.5 x 99.5 cm.Alberto Giacometti, Portrait de Marguerite Maeght, 1961. Oil on canvas, 130 x 96.5 cm.
 
 From 27 June to 22 November, 2020, the “The Giacometti” exhibition honors a family of artists. Its curator, Peter Knapp, proposes to showcase the talent and originality of the Giacometti: the world famous Alberto, his father Giovanni, his cousin Augusto, and his two brothers, Diego and Bruno. They were painters, sculptors and architects who left their mark on 20th century art.
Brought together for the first time in France, the Giacometti are five artists with different but intertwined paths. This original exhibition introduces us to the cultural family into which Alberto Giacometti, the most famous among the general public, was born. It bears witness to this family’s place in art and the links forged among the five family members. The exhibition also takes a look at their intimate relationship with their home village, Stampa, in the canton of Grisons, Switzerland, which has now become a must-see in modern art history.Based on some thirty major sculptures and drawings from the collection, rounded out by a number of paintings, films, archived photographs and objects, the Fondation Maeght is highlighting the unique, extraordinary story of these five artists from the same family: Giovanni Giacometti, painter (1868-1933), his three sons, Alberto Giacometti, painter, draftsman and sculptor (1901-1966); Diego Giacometti, sculptor and designer (1902-1985) and Bruno Giacometti, architect (1907-2012) and, lastly, their cousin Augusto Giacometti, painter (1877-1947). 
 

Diego Giacometti, table and chairs at the café of the Fondation Maeght, 1964.Bruno Giacometti, Swiss Pavilion at the 1952 Venice Biennale.
  
  Credits photos : Alberto Giacometti, Buste de Diego, 1954. Photo Archives Fondation Maeght. Portrait de Marguerite Maeght, 1961. Photo Galerie Maeght, Paris. © Succession Alberto Giacometti (Fondation Giacometti Paris + Adagp Paris) 2019-2020 for Alberto Giacometti. Giovanni Giacometti, Il Balcone, ca 1915-1916. Photo Roberto Paltrinieri © DR. Augusto Giacometti, Fantaisie chromatique, 1914. © DR.Diego Giacometti, table and chairs at the café of the Fondation Maeght, 1964. Photo Roland Michaud – Fondation Maeght Archives. © Adagp Paris 2019-2020. Bruno Giacometti, Swiss Pavilion at the 1952 Venice Biennale. © Werk 1952.
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