![]() ![]() ''When the Giacomettis came back to Paris, they didn't have any money and no one was buying art yet,'' said Mr. Frank, the uncle of Anne Frank, did not survive he committed suicide in New York in 1941. ''He thought these molds might be destroyed by the Nazis if they remained at Frank's place.'' They were safe at the Giacomettis' studios and were there when the brothers returned to Paris after the war, the dealer added. ''Diego rushed to the place of Jean-Michel Frank with a car and filled it up with all the models of the lamps,'' Mr. Matisse recalled, Diego saved the molds of these lamps and fireplace accessories, which were at Frank's atelier. ''Diego, who helped Alberto make the lamps, mounted them on metal to give them the necessary rigidity.'' On the eve of the German occupation of Paris, after Frank had fled to South America and Alberto had returned home to Switzerland, Mr. ''Jean-Michel Frank liked things in white and in plaster,'' Pierre Matisse, the art dealer, said last weekend. ![]() He produced more than a score of designs in a stunning variety of shapes - Cubist table lamps, neo-Etruscan floor lamps, Medusa-shaped wall sconces and Gothic-inspired andirons - virtually all of which were fabricated in plaster and some of which were cast in bronze. The artist, who sold very few sculptures in the decade before World War II, earned his living mostly by making these lighting fixtures and fireplace accessories. ![]() Frank incorporated these works in some of the era's most fashionable interiors, which he designed for such clients as Elsa Schiaparelli, the Paris fashion designer Nelson Rockefeller of New York, and Templeton Crocker, a wealthy San Francisco explorer and writer. One of Alberto's bronze wall sconces was sold for $38,500, and one of Diego's bronze dining tables, rich in green and gold patina, brought $110,000.Īlberto Giacometti was commissioned to produce lighting and fireplace designs between 19 by the influential Paris decorator, Jean-Michel Frank. In a number of cases, the prices for works by both Alberto and Diego were remarkable. It was Christie's second separate sale within a year of the period furnishings by Alberto Giacometti and his brother Diego. Giacometti's decorative works -lamps and wall sconces of bronze and plaster, which set trends in the 1930's - also brought handsome if more modest prices in an auction in the same rooms at Christie's where the record-setting sculpture - the 1960 ''Large Female Standing II'' - was sold. ALBERTO GIACOMETTI'S lesser known works -lighting fixtures and furnishings, which he produced to earn a living just before and after World War II -were once again at center stage two weeks ago on the day after one of his bronzes brought the record price at auction of $3.63 million for a sculpture. ![]()
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