Giacometti: Pure Presence

Unexpectedly good exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery looking at the work of Alberto Giacometti.

I must admit I just thought of Giacometti as the sculptor of thin figures. I hadn’t realised that these figures were portraits and in the main portraits of a small group of people including his wife and his brother. As you looked at groups of them alongside paintings and photographs you could see the likeness but you could also see how they expressed the character of the sitters. I loved one of his brother Diego in which he was sitting like an Egyptian scribe.

I loved the early pictures, mainly of his family, which were quite Post Impressionistic in style, especially a self-portrait with a yellow back ground which looked like a picture by Duncan Grant. It was interesting to see how he used two different styles, one at home with his family as his father was an artist which was slightly more traditional and a more cutting edge style when he was a student in Paris.

Closes on 10 January 2016.

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