Alberto Giacometti - Design New York Wednesday, December 9, 2020 | Phillips

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    • Provenance

      Galerie l'Arc en Seine, Paris
      Private collection, United Kingdom, acquired from the above, 1997
      Phillips, New York, "Design Evening Sale," December 12, 2017
      Acquired from the above

    • Literature

      Roger Lannes, "Exégèse poétique de Jean-Michel Frank," Art et Décoration, no. 1, 1939, pp. 8, 15
      Léopold Diego Sanchez, Jean-Michel Frank, Paris, 1980, pp. 166, 179
      Pierre-Emmanuel Martin-Vivier, Jean-Michel Frank: un décorateur dans le Paris des années 30, exh. cat., Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent, Paris, 2009, p. 78
      Pierre-Emmanuel Martin-Vivier, Jean-Michel Frank: The Strange and Subtle Luxury of the Parisian Haute-Monde in the Art Deco Period, New York, 2012, pp. 68, 92, 153, 216, 251, 284

    • Catalogue Essay

      The present lot is registered by the Fondation Alberto and Annette Giacometti in the online Alberto Giacometti Database (AGD) under the numbers 3752 and 3753.

      The present rare candle holder design was executed in several materials, including bronze, gilt plaster, and terracotta, in collaboration with Jean-Michel Frank. Frank is believed to have discovered Giacometti’s work at the 1929 Salon de Tuileries exposition held at the Palais de Bois. Giacometti went on to design over seventy objects for Frank, including seventeen lamps, eleven floor lamps, thirteen vases, ten wall lights, and other small accessories. Among the more notable Frank interiors to include Giacometti designs were Elsa Schiaparelli’s showroom on Place Vendôme—she in fact kept two of the present candle holders, executed in white plaster, on her desk (1934); Jean-Pierre Guerlain’s apartment (1935) and Jorge Born’s villa, Buenos Aires (1939). Giacometti assigned equal importance to his decorative works and sculptures. As he explained in a 1962 interview with André Parinaud, “For my livelihood, I accepted to make anonymous utilitarian objects for a decorator at that time, Jean-Michel Frank. […] it was mostly not well seen. It was considered a kind of decline. I nevertheless tried to make the best possible vases, for example, and I realized I was developing a vase exactly as I would a sculpture and that there was no difference between what I called a sculpture and what was an object, a vase!"

Δ144

Pair of candle holders

circa 1930
Terracotta.
Taller: 3 5/8 in. (9.2 cm) high, 4 in. (10.2 cm) diameter
Undersides incised AG 01 and AG 02, respectively. Together with a certificate of authenticity from the Comité Giacometti.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$25,000 - 35,000 

Sold for $69,300

Contact Specialist

DesignNewYork@phillips.com
+1 212 940 1265

Design

New York Auction 9 December 2020