January 31 - April 18, 2010
Alberto Giacometti: Woman with Chariot. Triumph and Death
The almost life-sized sculpture entitled "Woman with Chariot", which forms the focus of the exhibition, was made around 1945. It is the only plaster sculpture by Alberto Giacometti in a German museum, acquired by the Lehmbruck Museum with funds from Peter Klöckner Stiftung, and highlights the style and the way the sculptor worked in great detail. In comparison to the miniature-like and fragile plaster figures which Giacometti created as of 1930 through to 1945, it was to be the only large piece of work from this period of figurative reorientation when the sculptor was in Geneva and Maloja (1942-5).
The exhibition unites for the first time both of Giacometti's chariot sculptures and places them in the extensive complex of works in which they belong: For the first time, the large "Chariot" (1950) on loan from the Museum of Modern Art, New York stands opposite the Duisburg work. The motif of the chariot, which Giacometti introduced for the first time with "Woman with Chariot", plays a crucial part in how the figure impacts and the importance it has had through the way it forges a dramatic tension between immobility and vitality, distance and proximity.
Together with the other works on loan from inside and outside Germany, viewers will gain a comprehensive insight into the motif of the ceremonial chariot, and the sculptures are thus imbued with a mythical character in the cycle of triumph and death. It is not the first time Stiftung Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum - Center for International Sculpture - has showcased works by the Swiss sculptor as back in 1977 the Foundation held the very first retrospective of Giacometti in Germany.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue published by Hirmer Verlag, Munich: approx. 224 pages, approx. 230 illustrations; price of the museum edition approx. EUR 25. With contributions by Christoph Brockhaus, Pucci Corbetta and Roberto Sarfatti, Carol Jacobi, Jacques Vistel and the curators Gottlieb Leinz and Véronique Wiesinger. The catalogue also features an extensive interview with the artist Stephan Balkenhol, who will examine the figure in the context of the exhibition.
Generously supported by Germany's Kulturstiftung der Länder, Ernst von Siemens Kunststiftung, the Minister President of the State of North Rhine/Westphalia, Pro Helvetia and other partners.