SAINT-PAUL-DE-VENCE.- From 27 June to 31 October 2010, the Fondation Maeght is presenting an exceptional retrospective of the work of Alberto Giacometti.

Giacometti & Maeght 1946-1966 will assemble the artist’s best-known masterpieces, including the bronze sculptures L’Homme qui marche (Walking Man), Le Chien (Dog) and Le Chat (Cat). The exhibition will also include paintings, plaster casts and drawings on loan from major French and international museums, and from private collections.

The Fondation Maeght will also honour the man himself. Alberto Giacometti and Aimé Maeght were friends for twenty years. For twenty years they worked, debated and observed the creative process together. Their friendship is revealed in letters, films and portraits which shed new light on the man who was Alberto Giacometti.

A longstanding project that brings together over 170 important works, this retrospective will give visitors an insider’s view of Giacometti. It will be the major event in the art calendar for summer 2010. Some of these works are being presented to the public for the first time.

The curator particularly wished to exhibit works from the foundation’s collection and that of the Maeght family. These are joined by other exceptional works from international public and private collections, some being shown for the first time, to fully convey the curator’s intention.

While some early works and others from his Surrealist period are included, the exhibition will focus primarily on the post-war period and Giacometti’s stretched, long-limbed sculptures.

Among the 170 works in the exhibition are some 60 sculptures, including the iconic Homme qui marche (Walking Man). The Fondation Maeght is the only collection to own versions of this sculpture. They are all the more outstanding in that the bronzes were painted by Alberto Giacometti as opposed to the usual patina.

While some of Giacometti’s sculptures are known and admired the world over, his paintings, less numerous, have yet to be discovered. They account for a significant share of the exhibition, in particular portraits of Aimé and Marguerite Maeght whose friendship with Giacometti is the central premise of this exhibition.

Paintings, oils on canvas, wood and cardboard, together with over 80 drawings, extremely rare painted plaster casts, etchings and letters will also be shown. Certain works and letters carry a huge emotional charge, such as Giacometti’s drawings of Georges Braque on his deathbed, or letters to Aimé Maeght.

Photographs and films, some never previously shown in public, portray the artist at work in his studio.