Floor lamp by Giacometti auctioned in Geneva for over a million
Published: Friday, Jun 7th 2024, 16:20
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A floor lamp with a woman's head by Graubünden artist Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) fetched a price of over one million francs at an auction in Geneva on Thursday. This is five times the value estimated by the Piguet auction house and a record.
The sculpture was new to the art market, as Piguet announced on Friday. The artist only produced it between 1933 and 1939, in contrast to the other version of his floor lamp, which is more frequently found on the art market.
The second version was also created later and was cast until the 1980s. The lamp auctioned in Geneva is characterized by a narrow base and an elongated shaft.
The Piguet team discovered an exchange of letters between Giacometti and Henry-Louis Mermod from 1933 and 1934, in which the order for the floor lamp for Mermod is mentioned directly in the artist's Paris studio. This gives the work exceptional traceability, which confirms its rarity and increases its value, wrote Piguet.
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