Although contemporaries, Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) and Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964) never met, but many essential characteristics bring them close together and the exhibition is the first opportunity to examine these connections.
At a time when the debates around figuration versus abstraction raged, both men developed an art connected to real life. Though not realist, it did focus on the essence of the visible world. Both artists deliberately traveled little and made their respective studios a matrix of works dominated by uniquely similar research and interests. For example, they both shared the recurrence of the same models: for Morandi, the objects collected to be painted, the central figures of Annette and Diego among a narrow circle of personalities that went on enlarging for Giacometti.
In four chapters — The studio, The Familiar, Through the avant-gardes, Looking into real life — the exhibition gathers together the collections of the Fondation Giacometti, loans from Museo Morandi, Bologna and from private European collections, tracing their careers from 1913 to 1965.
