Some of My Lives by Rosamond Bernier

Author:Rosamond Bernier
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2011-08-31T21:00:00+00:00

Alberto Giacometti

I still remember Alberto Giacometti’s address by heart: 46, rue Hippolyte-Maindron in the 14th arrondissement, a rather gloomy part of the Montrouge neighborhood of Paris. I remember it not only because of my visits there during the 1950s, and later, but because I used to send postcards to him, gathered on my frequent trips to museums and foreign parts for my magazine, of subjects that might interest him.

He had lived and worked there since 1921. He shared the crowded quarters with his brother and closest friend, Diego. Sometimes his wife, Annette, who had followed him from Geneva, was around too, although she found the place so uncomfortable that she moved to a hotel. Also, she objected to his insistence on keeping the light burning all night. He never got over his fear of the dark. But he had warned her, when very reluctantly he married her after some years of cohabitation, that he was not going to change his ways. And he didn’t.

Annette was twenty years younger than Alberto. She was often treated with insulting indifference, but she will be remembered because she became one of his main models, both for paintings and for sculpture.

The studio was bleak. A single very bright lightbulb hung from the ceiling. A thick coating of dust reduced everything to a Giacometti color scheme of gray and more gray. There was always a distinctive smell of damp clay; a cluster of figures draped in wet cloth waited to be cast in plaster by Diego in his atelier just across the narrow corridor that separated the two studios. It was here that Diego made the armatures and the plaster casts from the original clay models.

There was a battered old sofa, two rickety chairs, one for Alberto, the other for whoever was posing for him, usually Annette or Diego. Red marks on the floor recorded the exact position of artist and subject. His needs were reduced to his necessary working material: clay, plaster, paper, canvas, paints. At that time Alberto was alternating, sometimes on the same day, between painting, drawing, and sculpture. No flowers. No memorabilia.

The only personal note were two little paintings in the cramped bedroom next to the studio: one of Alberto as a child painted by his father, Giovanni, a well-known Swiss post-Impressionist; the other painted by Alberto at fifteen of his brother.

Alberto himself was an impressive presence, solid of build, handsome features as rugged as if they had been hewn out of the rocks from his native Swiss mountains. He came from Stampa, a remote village high in the Italian Alps. Years of living in plaster dust seemed to have coated him permanently; even his clothes began to look like fragments of an old wall. He smoked incessantly, so a dusting of ash added to the patina.

Years before, a drunk driver had run up over a curb and crushed one of Alberto’s feet. Long stays in the hospital followed. He never fully recovered, and he walked with a pronounced limp. He never bothered to sue the driver, although the negligence was clear.

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