Giacometti the Surrealist – Objects as sculptures

Exhibition catalogue Giacometti: Surrealist. Objects as Sculptures, presented at the Giacometti Foundation, Paris (5 June – 1 November 2026).

The 1930s were a particularly prolific period for Giacometti, who was part of the Parisian Surrealist movement, producing a series of enigmatic sculptures. At the same time, he received his first commissions for decorative art and began a collaboration with Jean-Michel Frank, the leading interior designer of the Parisian intelligentsia.

For Frank, he designed a variety of objects: wall sconces, bas-reliefs, andirons, lamps, vases... Although part of the field of interior design, these creations bear the mark of Giacometti’s surrealist imagination, evident in both their forms and their themes. Conversely, his decorative work sometimes inspired his surrealist sculptures, which incorporated certain forms drawn from his functional objects

“I realised that I was working on a vase in exactly the same way as I did on sculptures, and that there was no difference between what I called a sculpture and what was an object, a vase!” Alberto Giacometti, interview with André Parinaud, 1962