Giacometti museum to be opened by the Seine

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Giacometti museum to be opened by the Seine
Giacometti museum to be opened by the Seine. Image: Boris15/Shutterstock.com

World’s largest collection of Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti to be housed in a former train station  

The legendary artwork of the Swiss surrealist sculptor and painter Alberto Giacometti will be housed in the Gare des Invalides station, on the banks of the Seine. This would be the world’s largest collection of the artist which will be exhibited in a venue originally built for the 1900 Paris exhibition. The station was used by passengers to be ferried to and from Versailles and Brittany, a report in the Guardian on Monday, November 14 stated.  

According to the report, the Giacometti Foundation, who will be taking over the Gare des Invalides station, have scheduled the opening for the museum in 2026. The artworks are presently housed in the Giacometti Institute, which is close to the Montparnasse studio, where the artist lived for over 40 years. But as the collection is so vast, the institute doesn’t have sufficient space to display all of Giacometti´s work. 

In a statement to le Monde, Catherine Grenier, the institute’s director said, “the new building would offer 6,000 square metres of the former train station near Les Invalides, opposite France’s foreign ministry at the Quai d’Orsay, to show the works and develop other projects”. She also added that, “We will have half of it, a really big, beautiful space. We will have enough space to present the Giacometti collection as well as temporary exhibitions and our project for an art school,” Grenier told Le Monde. 

The institute presently owns over 95 paintings, 260 bronzes, 550 plaster casts and thousands of drawings and engravings from the artist who died in 1966. Aside from this, the report adds, the institute also has an extensive archive of the artist’s documents and part of his library. As this collection is so vast, the institute doesn’t have sufficient space to display all of Giacometti´s work.


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