Giacometti and Dalí in the surreal dream garden

Alberto Giacometti was invited by André Breton and Salvador Dalí to join the Surrealist circle in April 1930. The occasion for this was Giacometti's sculpture "Boule suspendue", created in 1930: Inside a metal cage, a ball hangs by a thread, suspended above a crescent-shaped wedge with a deep notch to match the shape of the wedge. A key work among Giacometti's surrealist objects. The work is considered a metaphor of erotic desire and triggers in the viewer the desire to let the sphere swing above the wedge. Salvador Dalí was fascinated by the sexual frustration that the work exudes and elevated it to the status of a prototype of "objects with a symbolic function". In keeping with the Surrealists' credo: the whole world of the human psyche should be expressed in art. Thus also the repressed, sexuality and violence, obsession and cruelty.

This attitude was the basis of the joint work of Giacometti and Dalí.

The joint project began when the collector couple Charles and Marie-Laure Noailles commissioned Giacometti to create an installation in the garden of their summer residence, a modernist villa in Hyères. The resulting "Projet pour une place" is an ensemble of five geometric figures on a plateau: a cone, a disc, a snake, a stele and a hemisphere. As in a dream, the objects suggest a concrete function, evoke associations when viewed and form a space in which they take their place and interact. The objects appear tangible and organic on the one hand, artificially constructed on the other, yet each has its own character. Dalí took up the idea and embedded the elements in approximate human size in a biomorphic garden layout as the sketch "Projet pour les Noailles" reveals.

The project "Projet pour une place" was never realised as a whole in its original size and carved in stone. Today it stands 1:1 as a replica and as the centrepiece of the exhibition in the middle of the room. The exhibition also features an important group of surrealist objects by Giacometti and exquisite works by Dalí. In addition, there are important sketches by the two artists, such as Giacometti's "Carnets", which are rarely shown, and documents and photographs of their joint work. The extensive show allows visitors to immerse themselves in the world of Parisian Surrealism of the early 1930s and sheds light on two influential representatives of the movement who sought large-scale form and open space in their collaboration. Works by Luis Buñuel, Yves Tanquy and other exponents of Surrealism are also presented.