Diego Giacometti

Commissioned directly from the artist in 1980

Michel Butor, Diego Giacometti, Paris, 1985, p. 33, for a period photograph of the figurative elements of the stretcher in the artist's studio

Designed circa 1978, Diego Giacometti's Hommage à Böcklin console exemplifies the artist's remarkable ability to transcend the functional nature of furniture, transforming it into an imaginary work poised between utilitarian object and sculptural vision.

The work pays tribute to the symbolist painter Arnold Böcklin, renowned for his series Die Toteninsel (Isle of the Dead, 1880–1886). These haunting landscapes, dominated by cypress trees rooted upon an inaccessible island, profoundly shaped the European imagination. Rediscovered by the Surrealists during the 1920s, Böcklin's work was reinterpreted through a new sensibility attentive to dreams and the unconscious. His imagery deeply informed the visual thinking of Giorgio de Chirico and Max Ernst, and more broadly a constellation of artists fascinated by the iconography of thresholds and the afterlife.

In this console, Giacometti does not literally quote Böcklin's imagery but instead distills its emotional resonance: the tension between stillness and passage, silence and apparition. Two finely modelled rows of cypress trees structure the composition, directing the viewer's gaze toward a central disc suspended between moon and horizon. The resulting composition unfolds an unusual sense of spatiality within Diego Giacometti's oeuvre, evoking a mental landscape in which furniture becomes image.

The owl, a recurring figure in Giacometti's bestiary, occupies an exceptional position here. Unlike all other known versions, in which it rests upon the rear stretcher, the owl in the present example is perched on a slender support attached to the left rear leg. This unique displacement grants the bird an unusual degree of autonomy, transforming it into a silent witness, an observer presiding over the scene. This distinctive configuration identifies the present console as the only variant created specifically for François and Carole Rochas, conferring upon it the status of a unique work within the artist's corpus.

The nuanced treatment of the patinas (the verdigris of the cypress trees, the warm brown tones of the owl, and the subtly coppery glow of the central disc) fully contributes to this silent dramaturgy. Light seems to emanate from the material itself, guiding the viewer through the composition toward a discreet yet compelling visual focal point.

Rather than literal homage, the present console emerges as a poetic distillation of Diego Giacometti's artistic language: a piece of furniture transformed into landscape, where symbolist memory, surrealist resonances, and sculptural invention converge in a work of rare contemplative intensity.

Work authenticated in accordance with the process established by the Diego Giacometti Estate

© ADAGP, Paris, 2026