On 3rd February, L'Homme Qui Marche by Alberto Giacometti was sold for a record-breaking 104.32 million dollars (some 75 million Euros) at Sotheby's in London. The precedent had previously been set by Pablo Picasso's Garçon à la Pipe in May 2004. This is now the highest price ever paid for a work of art in a public sale.

The first L'Homme Qui Marche nearly belonged to a project from the Wall Street bank, Chase Manhattan, but their venture was refused. Then in 1959 Aimé Maeght decided to entrust to Giacometti the court of his Maeght Foundation in Saint Paul (then under construction) so that L'Homme Qui Marche could find a deserving resting place.

Our Foundation is proud to be the only collection to have two versions of this work, both exceptional pieces because instead of a patina, they are painted on bronze by the artist.

« The market forever dictated the choices of the Maeght family, but when the market validates the choices, passions and convictions of Maeght, I can only be moved. Will visitors still be able to enjoy looking at this record-breaking work with the same simplicity? Yes, the glance is spontaneous; that is the magic of the Maeght Foundation. »

Yoyo Maeght

Some websites about Giacometti :

• monoeilsurlart.blog4ever.com
• blogs.lesechos.fr
• artclair.com
• 24heures.ch
• bbc.co.uk
• archives.tsr.ch
• europe1.fr
• fgiacometti.web1.clight.fr

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The Foundation's forthcoming Giacometti exhibition this summer will illuminate the Maeght family's friendly bond with brothers Alberto and Diego. More than one hundred and twenty works will be exhibited, among them, intimate portraits of Aimé and Marguerite Maeght; pieces of furniture made for the Foundation and the family home; sculptures (such as the complete series of Les Femmes de Venise, Le Chien, Le Chat); extremely rare painted plasters, interspersed with engravings, films and family photos. In short: a compelling account of emotion and beauty.

The Giacometti Exhibition at the Maeght Foundation will run from 1st July to the 15th October 2010.

The Maeght Foundation is currently closed, reopening envisaged mid-April.

While waiting for the reopening of the Maeght Foundation in mid-April, you can still admire works from the collection, including L'Homme Qui Marche, at an exhibition devoted to Aimé Maeght in Ferrara, Italy.

This show traces Aimé from his first gallery, inaugurated in Paris in 1945 with an exhibition by Matisse, through to the collector, editor and friend he became to artists such as Kandinsky, Chagall, Braque and Miró. Contrary to the tendencies of the time, his gallery chose not to champion any single artistic movement but instead to favour quality first, seeking to expose a vast panorama of international art.

A hundred works from the Maeght Foundation, the Gallery and the family's collection - tables especially, but also sculptures, drawings, engravings, historic photographs and illustrated books by Maeght editions - make it possible to rebuild a fascinating framework of French artistic life. Several sections are devoted to painters of differing pictorial tendencies: one is dedicated to the astonishing International Exhibition of Surrealism in 1947, while another, entitled “Black and white”, pays homage to the sensitivity of Aime Maeght for engraving. Finally, a vast section devoted to the Maeght Foundation proposes interesting historical photographs, rebuilding the birth and the most important events of this place.

Exhibition from 28 february to 2 june 2010
Open every day from 9 to 19.
Ferrara Mostre e Musei
tel. +39 0532 244949, fax +39 0532 203064
diamanti@comune.fe.it  www.palazzodiamanti.it