Flora - Alberto Giacometti

Catalogue de l'exposition Flora, présentée à l’Institut Giacometti, Paris (5 avril - 9 juin 2019).

Flora installation reframes the history of the unknown American artist, Flora Mayo, bringing her compelling biography to life and revealing a particular period in Alberto Giacometti's life.

Flora Mayo came to Paris in 1925 to study at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Antoine Bourdelle's sculpture class. There she met Alberto Giacometti, with whom she began a romantic relationship. Each of them made a portrait of the other. But the consequences of the Great Depression in the United States put an end to Flora’s life as an artist in Paris. With her family ruined, she had to go back to America, and earn her living far from the artistic world, in very precarious conditions: first she worked in a factory, then became a cleaning woman. While Giacometti would become world famous, Flora Mayo's fate has left little trace in the history of art, being limited to a few sexist footnotes in the 1985 biography by James Lord dedicated to Giacometti.

The story of Flora Mayo, which Hubbard / Birchler have reconstructed after some outstanding detective work, presents an opportunity for Hubbard / Birchler to discuss the role of women in art history and the writing of art history.