In “Faces and Landscapes of Home,” Hauser & Wirth Brings Giacometti Back to Stampa

<img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" class="lazyload size-full-width wp-image-1611083" src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==" data-src="https://observer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/GIACO143307-hires.jpg?quality=80&w=970" alt="A post-impressionist painting of a lake and valley surrounded by mountains, with expressive dabs of color suggesting reflections and vegetation." width="970" height="766" data-caption='Alberto Giacometti, <em>Silsersee (Lake Sils)</em>, 1921-1922, Oil on canvas, 50 x 61 cm. / 19 5/8 x 24 in. <span class=”lazyload media-credit”>© Succession Alberto Giacometti / 2025, ProLitteris, Zurich, Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur</span>’>

“Homecoming shows” might be a phrase more associated with Bruce Springsteen or Adele, but this time it’s the works of 20th-century sculptor and painter Alberto Giacometti returning to an area the artist rejected and inspired in equal measure. We use the expression only quite loosely, however. Giacometti was born in 1901 in Stampa, situated in the Bregaglia Valley, 20 miles from ultra-chic St. Moritz, itself around 35 kilometers from the Italian border. Seeing as “the village” (as it is referred to around these parts) has a Hauser & Wirth, it’s only apposite that it should be the venue for this most evocative of exhibitions.

Indeed, the gallery has made it a tradition to highlight the artists and works that have had a connection with St. Moritz and the local area, the Engadin Valley. In the past, it has shown Gerhard Richter’s overpainted vistas of the nearby Alps and displayed artworks by Jean-Michel Basquiat that he produced when he stayed at the hunting lodge of his agent Bruno Bischofberger.

This exhibition, curated by Giacometti authority Tobia Bezzola, is a neat encapsulation of the artist’s work that foregrounds the dichotomies that punctuated his life. On view is a display that manifests the contrasts and conflicts between the professional and the personal; the style and themes; form and execution; public and private; inspiration and influence; Paris and Stampa; and, most of all for Giacometti, the choice between sculptor and painter.

Amid such sturm und drang, though, are early paintings such as Silsersee (1921-1922) and Monte del Forno (1923), which instill a calming serenity with their deft post-Impressionist execution and pastoral vistas. These embody the fascination and awe-inspiring power of the natural beauty abundant in the area and have had a lasting impact on creatives over the years, from the historical reflections of Nietzsche (who vacationed in nearby Sils) to the contemporary output of Not Vital. These early pieces still exude a distinctly sculptural quality, and his Self-Portrait (1920) is a subtle signpost to his later fascination—not only with capturing form, but also with the inspiration that Stampa and his home provided throughout his career.

With Giacometti’s move to Paris in 1922 (turning his back on his family and his father’s influence as a former landscape painter), he embraced the panoply of philosophies and movements that were coalescing in the French capital. Here, he was not only speaking another language but also attempting to find his own artistic one, as Bezzola explains. “There, he learned to speak the language of the international avant-garde, and that of Surrealism fluently and eloquently. During his annual returns to his rural homeland, however, he reverted to the Italian dialect of the valley in which he had grown up, and his artistic forms of expression adjusted accordingly.”

One look at Tête de Diego (1947) on show bears this out: the sketch lines of his brother’s head fuse the painterly with the out-of-proportion oval shape of his later sculptural works. It’s what Bezzola terms “an increasing formal and methodological dissolution of this divide” between painter and sculptor. While Giacometti made the sketch in Paris, Diego was clearly still in the artist’s mind from an extended visit back to Stampa to see his family only the year before, which may have renewed his artistic fire. Just a year later, in 1948, came Giacometti’s celebrated solo exhibition in New York featuring his trademark elongated figures.

This period marked a particularly fruitful time for Giacometti, which this exhibition captures in paintings such as Bust (1948) and Seated Man (1950), as well as Head with Long Neck (c. 1949, cast 1965). It’s the juxtaposition of these works that, rather than showing division, actually emphasizes the unity in Giacometti’s oeuvre. His figures—whether sketched, painted, or sculpted—continue to intrigue and command attention with their subjects and execution.

Another unique facet of “Faces and Landscapes of Home” that serves to augment the works on show is the lesser-seen photographs of Giacometti by the photographer and trusted friend Ernst Scheidegger. Other photographers captured the artist in his Paris studios, but it was Scheidegger who was able to transgress into the more personal, behind-the-scenes aspects of his home life in Stampa, particularly in the 1950s when Giacometti returned to the valley to escape the Parisian bustle. “In his letters, he often complains that in Stampa he did not relax or recover at all, but was instead completely absorbed in his work the entire time,” Bezzola says of this period.

Scheidegger’s delightfully tender shot, Alberto with his mother Annetta (1959), is trumped only by Alberto Giacometti at his Worktable in Stampa (1965). Here, in the last year of his life, he can be seen sitting at his desk strewn with apples, some half-made miniatures beside him, as he remains immersed in fashioning a sculpture, while a cigarette burns louchely in an ashtray beside him. How rock’n’roll is that?

“Alberto Giacometti: Faces and Landscapes of Home” is on view at Hauser & Wirth, St Moritz, through March 28, 2026.

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