LA COULEUR ET MOI. AUGUSTO GIACOMETTI L'exposition s'int resse l'oeuvre d'un grand ma tre de la couleur. Augusto Giacometti a rendu compte de sa passion pour le ph nom ne de la couleur dans une conf rence donn e la radio en 1933. Le titre de son expos , La couleur et moi , est la fois la devise et le leitmotiv de l?exposition. La pr sentation met en lumi re la voie singuli re choisie par l?illustre peintre suisse en confrontant son ?uvre celles d?autres artistes de la couleur : Paul C zanne, Adolf H lzel, Johannes Itten, Paul Klee, Josef Albers, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Richard Paul Lohse, Jerry Zeniuk et Raimer Jochims. Augusto Giacometti appartient la c l bre dynastie de peintres du m me nom, originaire de Stampa, un village de montagne de la vall e de Bregaglia. La maison familiale de Giacometti se tenait dans le bas du village, non loin de la maison et de l?atelier o vivait et travaillait son cousin au deuxi me degr Giovanni, de neuf ans son a n et p re d?Alberto Giacometti. Apr s avoir accompli une formation l?enseignement du dessin l?Ecole d?arts appliqu s de Zurich, Augusto Giacometti poursuivit ses tudes Paris de 1897 1901. De 1902 1915, il v cut et travailla Florence, puis s?installa d finitivement Zurich en 1915. Ses premi res ?uvres, qui affichent encore leur filiation avec l?Art nouveau, t moignent d j du talent de coloriste de l?artiste. Son tude approfondie des lois et des possibilit s de la couleur en fera un pionnier de la peinture abstraite. Ses peintures de paysage et ses portraits, et plus particuli rement ses fantaisies chromatiques r alis es entre 1910 et 1920, constitu rent l?apport d cisif de Giacometti l?art moderne. Artiste r solument ouvert toutes les nouveaut s, il eut des changes constants avec les mouvements et les groupes d?artistes d?avant-garde de son temps. En Italie, il entretint des relations avec les futuristes, et Zurich, avec les dada stes. L?exposition s?int resse aussi l??uvre tardive de Giacometti, ses natures mortes florales aux couleurs somptueuses, ses paysages radieux, ses peintures de villes tiss es de lumi re, o les objets rayonnent, le plus souvent sur des arri re-plans de tonalit sombre, d?une ivresse et d?un exotisme polyphoniques de couleurs, et enfin ses vitraux, o la lumi re et la couleur se manifestent dans leur plus parfaite authenticit . COLOR AND I. AUGUSTO GIACOMETTI The comprehensive exhibition concentrates on Augusto Giacometti as a great master of color. In a radio lecture in 1933 he systematically described his thorough investigation of color phenomena. The title of his talk was ?Die Farbe und ich? (?Color and I?) is both the motto and leitmotif of the exhibition. The show traces the very original path trod by this important Swiss artist, and in addition draws a comparison to individual works by other artists whose work centered on color: Paul C zanne, Adolf H lzel, Johannes Itten, Paul Klee, Josef Albers, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Richard Paul Lohse, Jerry Zeniuk or Raimer Jochims. Augusto Giacometti belongs to the famous Giacometti family dynasty of painters from Stampa, a village in Val Bregaglia. The house of Augusto Giacometti?s parents is situated only a short distance from the house and studio in which his second cousin Giovanni Giacometti lived, his senior by nine-years and the father of Alberto Giacometti. After training to become a drawing teacher at the arts school in Zurich, Augusto Giacometti studied art in Paris from 1897 to 1901. From 1902 to 1915 he lived and worked in Florence. In 1915 he finally settled in Zurich. Already his early work, which still pursued Jugendstil goals, displays Giacometti?s unmistakable coloristic talent. He is a pioneer of abstract painting in his exhaustive study of the rules and characteristics of color. Giacometti made a major contribution to modernism with landscape pictures and portraits as well as with his ?chromatic fantasies?, which he executed in the period from 1910 to 1920. As an artist who was always receptive to innovation he cultivated a lively exchange with avant-garde movements and artists? groups of the time. In Italy he was in touch with the futurists and, in Zurich, with the Dadaists. The exhibition will, however, also focus on his later work, on the magnificently colored still-lives of flowers, on bright and cheerful landscapes and light-filled city views. The things he depicts in his paintings are rendered in mystically intoxicating colors, radiant in exotic tints against a largely dark background. And, not least, the artist?s glass paintings with their purity of light and color will be on view.