GIOVANNI GIACOMETTI (1868-1933)
Piz Bacone (3,244m - 10,643ft)
Switzerland
In Piz Bacone, oil on canvas, 1916, Private collection
The mountain
Piz Bacone (3,244m - 10,643ft) is a secluded mountain, situated in Engadin, a region of the Swiss Alps located in the canton of Graubünden in the south-east of the country, near the borders with Liechtenstein, Austria and Italy. Piz Bacone is quite unknwon and hopefully even less frequented ! Climbing to the dawn of mountaineering history , it consists of broken rocks and shattered by the no longer existing glaciers that once cloaked it. The southern wall is an exception, a reddish, compact and flashy aesthetic, but limited in height. Interrupted by a ledge of blocks, in the upper part the wall consists of a beautiful pillar, which however is less compact and quite disturbed by grasses and lichens.
The painter
Giovanni Giacometti was a Swiss painter, the father of the famous painter and sculptor Alberto Giacometti, and of Diego Giacometti, the furniture designer as well as the father of the architect Bruno Giacometti ! In 1886, he studied painting at the School of Decorative Arts in Munich, where he met Cuno Amiet the following year. Both decide to pursue their studies in Paris, in October stood at the Académie Julian, where Giacometti remains until 1891.
In 1893, shortly after his return to Switzerland, to Bergell, he became friends with Giovanni Segantini, his eldest ten years, which has great influence on his work by opening it to the beauty of the mountain scenery and the rules of divisionism. After his sudden death in 1899, Giacometti met Ferdinand Hodler, who teaches him to create a rigorous and ornamental composition by appropriate use of shapes and colors.
He sees regularly Cuno Amiet, who after a year spent in Pont-Aven, shared his experience with him. In 1900 he exhibited in the Swiss Pavillon of the Universal Exhibition in Paris. From 1905, Giacometti works again in a great complicity with Amiet and begins to break free from the influence of Segantini. In 1906, held an exhibition of his work at Kunstlerhaus Zurich. In 1907 he went to Paris with Amiet to the Cézanne retrospective at the Salon d'Automne. They copy all the works of Van Gogh. In 1908, he exhibited with the French Fauves at the Richter Gallery in Dresden.
In 1909, the Tannhauser Gallery presents his works in Munich. He meets Alexi von Jawlensky, and in 1911 participates in the Berlin Secession. In 1912, Giacometti has a solo show at the Kunsthaus Zurich presents two works in the Sonderbund of Cologne. In 1918 after Hodler' s death, he began to be involved into the Swiss political world paying an important part as a committed artist, following int that way friend Amiet.
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2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau
