DIEGO GIACOMETTI
LA COLLECTION MARC BARBEZAT
Published September 2017
In June 2016, on the ocassion of the Design Miami/Basel Fair, Galerie Jacques Lacoste presented an unpublished set of works by Diego Giacometti from the collection of Marc and Olga Barbezat, including a rare and exceptional « Chambres à livres » comprising a library and a daybed, created between 1967 and 1969.
Founder of the magazine and then of the publishing house L’Arbalète, Marc Barbezat is a major figure in French literature and poetry. In the space of thirteen issues and until 1958, he published Antonin Artaud, Mouloudji, Michel Leiris, Paul Claudel, Raymond Queneau, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway, Henri Michaux and Louis-René des Forêts.
Directed by Marc Barbezat and his wife, the editions of L’Arbalète also owe their fame to the publication of Jean Genet’s first books (eleven texts in total, including Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs, Miracle de le rose and L’Enfant criminel) before a quarrel interrupted the relationship and the writer joined the Gallimard editions.
It is thanks to Jean Genet, who between 1957 and 1958 wrote L’Atelier d’Alberto Giacometti published by L’Arbalète, that Marc Barbezat got to know the Giacometti brothers. Preserved in Monsieur and Madame Barbazet’s apartment until June 2016, the entire commission was placed with Diego Giacometti in the second half of the 1960s, which included the « Chambres à livres », and remains a unique work as much for its character and vocation as for the identity of its recipient.
A year after its exhibition at Basel, Galerie Jacques Lacoste published an important monograph dedicated to this commission, under the title : Diego Giacometti, la collection Marc Barbezat, Éditions Jacques Lacoste, Paris, 2017.
Presented during the Paris Biennale, which took place at the Grand Palais in Paris between the 11th and 17th September 2017, this book includes texts by Daniel Marchesseau, Jacques Lacoste, Françoise Claire Prodhon, as well as interviews with Claude Delay, Philippe Anthonioz and Gérard Bosio.