The first exhibition devoted to the Surrealist cooperation between Salvador Dalí and Alberto Giacometti. At its centre is the construction of a large project that was designed for a garden but never realized.

The garden of dreams. Projet pour une place

Admission

CHF 23.–/18.– (concessions and groups) inclusive Collection.
Free admission for members, children and young people under the age of 17.

Note for groups

We look forward to welcoming you to the Kunsthaus. For organizational reasons, prior registration is required. info@kunsthaus.ch+41 44 253 84 84

PLAN YOUR VISIT

The project for a square began in 1929, when Giacometti designed the first of three figures for the de Noailles’ villa in Hyères. He also conceived a set of geometrical figures on a plateau, and from this the actual ‘Projet pour une place’ started to take shape. In his notebooks, the artist drew five elements that evoke myriad associations in the viewer’s mind. As if in a dream, the objects – a cone, a disc, a snake, a stele and a hemisphere – seem merely to hint at an actual function. Their forms oscillate between tangible and abstract, naturally organic and artificially constructed: objects with a character of their own that suddenly form a space in which visitors can immediately rediscover themselves. Dalí’s idea was to embed these approximately human-sized elements in a biomorphic garden landscape, as his sketch ‘Projet pour les Noailles’ (1932/33) reveals. Covering a surface area the size of a pavilion (200 x 317 x 225 cm), the installation was to be located in the walled-off garden at the modernist Villa Noailles in Hyères. It was a collaborative work based on a shared mindset.

Giacometti_Alberto__Projet_pour_une_place__Venedig_Peggy-Guggenheim
Alberto Giacometti, Projet pour une place, 1931/32, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York) Photo: Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice © Succession Alberto Giacometti / 2023, ProLitteris, Zurich
Giacometti_Alberto__Pointe_a_loeil__Zurich_Kunsthaus
Alberto Giacometti, Pointe à l’œil, around 1932, Kunsthaus Zürich, Alberto Giacometti-Stiftung, 1975 © Succession Alberto Giacometti / 2023, ProLitteris, Zurich
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Salvador Dalí, Femme à tête de roses, 1935, Kunsthaus Zürich, 1957, © Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí / 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich
Giacometti_Alberto__Homme_et_femme__Paris_Pompidou
Alberto Giacometti, Homme et femme, 1928/29, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Musée national d’art moderne / Centre de création industrielle, Paris, Dation en 1984 Photo: Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Bertrand Prévost © Succession Alberto Giacometti / 2023, ProLitteris, Zurich
Dali_Salvador__La_vache_spectrale__Paris_Pompidou
Salvador Dalí, La vache spectrale, 1928, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Musée national d’art moderne / Centre de création industrielle, Achat de l‘Etat, 1974, Attribution, 1974 Photo: Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Jean-Claude Planchet © Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí / 2023, ProLitteris, Zurich
Giacometti_Alberto__Cube__Paris_Fondation-Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti, Cube, deux éléments de Projet pour une place et Figure dans l’atelier, around 1937, Fondation Giacometti, Paris, Photo: Fondation Giacometti, Paris © Succession Alberto Giacometti / 2023, ProLitteris, Zurich
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Alberto Giacometti, Main prise, 1932, Kunsthaus Zürich, Alberto Giacometti-Stiftung, 1965 © Succession Alberto Giacometti / 2023, ProLitteris, Zurich
Dali_Salvador__La_memoire_de_la_femme-enfant__Madrid_Reina-Sofia
Salvador Dalí, La mémoire de la femme-enfant, 1929, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Salvador Dalí Bequest, 1990, Photo: Archivo Fotográfico Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid © Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí / 2023, ProLitteris, Zurich

Where is the exhibition located?

1st floor of the Chipperfield Building. See our online visitor guide!

The exhibition at the Kunsthaus presents an important group of Surrealist objects by Giacometti, including the ‘Boule suspendue’, a key work from the Basel holdings of the Alberto Giacometti Foundation. A small but select group of paintings by Dalí reminds the visitor of the phantasmagorical visual world for which he is still famous today. Important sketches by Giacometti and Dalí – including a number from the former’s rarely shown ‘carnets’ (sketchbooks) – as well as documents and photographs complement the exhibition, making it a uniquely immersive experience of the creative world of Parisian Surrealism in the early 1930s. For once, Surrealism reveals itself as an artistic movement that, through collaboration between two of its leading exponents, sought large form and open space. The presentation, which was previously shown at the Institut Giacometti in Paris, explores how – thanks to his cooperation with Salvador Dalí – the far-sighted Alberto Giacometti devised a new way of conceiving art: one that viewed the artwork as an object which, when placed in space like an installation, left conventional ideas of sculpture trailing in its wake. It is complemented by the works of other Surrealist artists including Luis Buñuel, René Magritte and Yves Tanguy.

In cooperation with the Fondation Giacometti, Paris.

Supported by Credit Suisse – Partner Kunsthaus Zürich, as well as the Hans Imholz Foundation and the Truus und Gerrit van Riemsdijk Foundation.

Supported by:

Ill. above: Exhibition view, Alberto Giacometti, Boule suspendue, 1930, Kunstmuseum Basel, deposited by the Alberto Giacometti-Stiftung, 1965 © Succession Alberto Giacometti / 2023, ProLitteris, Zurich