Diego Giacometti

designer

Diego Giacometti worked in bronze, a material that allowed fine modelling and elastic, detailed forms. He learned the craft alongside his brother Alberto, sharing a studio at 46 rue Hippolyte-Maindron in Paris and collaborating so closely that their individual contributions are sometimes difficult to separate. After Alberto's death, Diego produced furniture and decorative ensembles for the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, which received over five hundred items from his studio. Animals structured much of his work. Chairs, tables and lighting took the form of birds, horses, lions and smaller creatures drawn from the farm animals of his Swiss childhood and from a more mythological vocabulary. The lost wax casting method suited the precision he wanted. An ostrich sculpture came about when a friend gave him an ostrich egg and he built the bird around it. Recognition as an independent artist came late, growing substantially only after he was no longer working in his brother's shadow.