“Shows coming home” may be a phrase most associated with Bruce Springsteen or Adele, but in this case the works of 20th century sculptor and painter Alberto Giacometti return to the place the artist rejected and encouraged in equal measure. We use the expression only loosely, however. Giacometti was born in 1901 in Stampa, located in the Bregaglia Valley, 20 kilometers from the ultra-chic St. Moritz, which itself is 35 kilometers from the Italian border. Seeing it as a “village” (as it is referred to around these parts) has Hauser & Wirth, suggesting that it should be the location of this provocative exhibition.
Indeed, the gallery has made it a tradition to highlight artists and works that have had a connection to St. Moritz and the local area, the Engadin Valley. In the past, it has shown Gerhard Richter’s extravagantly painted views of the nearby Alps and exhibited works of art by Jean-Michel Basquiat that he produced while staying at the hunting lodge of his agent Bruno Bischofberger.
The exhibition, curated by Giacometti’s master Tobia Bezzola, is a clean document of the artist’s career that reflects the conflicts that surrounded his life. On view is a show that reveals the differences and conflicts between the professional and the personal; style and themes; form and execution; public and private; motivation and influence; in Paris and Stampa; and, above all for Giacometti, the choice between the sculptor and the painter.
Among such sturm and dranghowever, it is the first drawings that are similar The Silsersee (1921-1922) and Monte del Forno (1923), embodying a calm calmness with their post-Impressionist execution of genius and pastoral ideas. This combines the fascination and the incredible power of the natural beauty that abounds in the area and has had a lasting impact on creators over the years, from the historical thinking of Nietzsche (who visited nearby Sils) to the current release of Not Vital. These early pieces still exhibit a clear sculptural quality, and his Self-Portrait (1920) is a subtle sign of his later obsession—not just with the form, but also with the inspiration that Stampa and his home provided throughout his work.
With Giacometti’s move to Paris in 1922 (turning his back on his family and his father’s influence as a landscape painter), he embraced a collection of philosophies and movements converging in the French capital. Here, he was not only speaking another language but also trying to find his own art, as Bezzola explains. There, he learned to speak the language of the international avant-garde, and of Surrealism fluently and fluently. However, during his annual return to his rural homeland, he reverted to the Italian language of the region in which he had grown up, and his artistic ways of speaking were adjusted accordingly.”
One look Hosted by Diego (1947) in the exhibition proves this: the sketchy lines of his brother’s head blend in the painted form with the larger oval shape of his later sculptures. It is what Bezzola calls “the growing formal dissolution and method of making this separation” between painter and sculptor. When Giacometti made the painting in Paris, Diego was clearly on the artist’s mind from a long visit to Stampa to see his family the previous year, which may have rekindled his artistic fire. Just a year later, in 1948, came Giacometti’s famous exhibition in New York showing his long sales figures.
This period marked the most fruitful period for Giacometti, which this exhibition captures in paintings like Bust (1948) and The Sitting Man (1950), as well Long Head and Neck (c. 1949, actor 1965). It is the juxtaposition of these works that, instead of showing separation, actually emphasizes unity in Giacometti’s work. His illustrations—whether drawn, painted, or engraved—continue to intrigue and draw attention to their subjects and execution.
Another unique aspect of “Faces and Landscapes of Home” that helps to enrich the works in the exhibition are Giacometti’s rarely seen portraits by photographer and faithful friend Ernst Scheidegger. Other photographers captured the artist in his Paris studios, but it was Scheidegger who managed to transcend his personal, behind-the-scenes views of domestic life at Stampa, especially in the 1950s when Giacometti returned to the village to escape the chaos of Paris. “In his letters, he often complains that at Stampa he did not relax or recover, but he was always focused on his work,” Bezzola said at the time.
Scheidegger’s soft image, Alberto and his mother Annetta (1959), sung by Alberto Giacometti at his Worktable at Stampa (1965). Here, in the last year of his life, he can be seen sitting at his desk full of apples, next to him half-finished miniatures, as he concentrates on making a sculpture, while a cigarette burns noisily in an ashtray beside him. How rock’n’roll is that?
“Alberto Giacometti: Faces and Domestic Places” is on view at Hauser & Wirth, St Moritz, until March 28, 2026.
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