Museum Cantini Debuts First Giacometti Exhibition In Marseille

For the first time in its history, Marseille welcomes a major exhibition dedicated to the towering figure of 20th-century sculpture: Alberto Giacometti. Hosted by the Museum Cantini and organised in collaboration with the Fondation Giacometti in Paris, Alberto Giacometti–Sculpter le Vide is more than a retrospective. It’s a deep and meditative exploration of Giacometti’s obsession with space, absence, and the void–a subject that permeates every facet of his practice, from his earliest Cubist experiments to his haunting, elongated post-war figures.

Curated jointly by Romain Perrin (Fondation Giacometti), Ines de Bordas (Fondation Giacometti), and Louise Madinier (Museum Cantini), the exhibition gathers over 90 works–including sculptures in plaster and bronze, alongside paintings, drawings, and prints–to interrogate the central question of emptiness in Giacometti’s oeuvre. Through this lens, Sculpter le Vide succeeds in offering both a chronological and thematic journey, one that immerses viewers in Giacometti’s shifting but always spatially-attuned vision of the human form.

A Dialogue with the Void

“Giacometti is a sculptor of emptiness,” wrote Jean-Paul Sartre, who saw in the artist’s work an existential confrontation with the nothingness that surrounds and defines human presence. This philosophical grounding provides the conceptual backbone for the exhibition, which unfolds across four rooms, each with a distinct atmosphere and rhythm. The scenography–designed by a Paris-based studio–intuitively mirrors the progression of Giacometti’s thought, emphasizing space, shadow, and form in careful balance.

Museum Cantini’s own architecture plays a significant role. The former 17th-century mansion, generously gifted to the city by Jules Cantini in 1916, is both intimate and grand. Its luminous rooms and flowing transitions set the stage for a show that is as much about seeing as it is about feeling.

The exhibition opens with Giacometti’s early sculptural experiments from the 1920s—cool, abstract works in marble and plaster that already hint at his preoccupation with volume and absence. Here, influences from Cubism and non-Western art abound. Works like Le Couple (1926) and Femme (plate III) (1927–29) reduce the human form to minimal shapes and incised lines, recalling stelae or ceremonial tablets. These are not depictions but evocations—carved spaces where presence and absence intermingle.

Dominating this first room is Femme Cuillère (Spoon Woman, 1927), a totemic form whose concave belly is both womb and void, echoing the shape of a spoon and the hollowness within. A perfect encapsulation of the show’s title, it’s also an emblem of Giacometti’s early synthesis of surrealism, abstraction, and ritual. “It’s about sculpting around space, not just mass,” says curator Romain Perrin. “This work defines his approach to negative space.”

From Surrealist Dreams to Personal Loss

As we move into the second section, the tone shifts. Here, the Surrealist years take centre stage, and Giacometti’s engagement with dreams, desire, and psychological space comes to the fore. These works are darker, stranger, and more volatile–rooted not in form, but in feeling. One standout is Boule suspendue (1930), a delicately perverse assemblage where a ball hangs by a string over a curving form in a cage-like structure. At once erotic and enigmatic, the piece invites viewers into a surreal landscape where meaning constantly slips.

Nearby, Fleur en danger (1932) and the painting Le Palais à 4 heures du matin (1932) extend this dreamscape. But it is L’Objet invisible (Hands Holding the Void, 1934) that marks the emotional and thematic climax of this section. Made shortly after the death of Giacometti’s father, this sculpture of a masked figure cupping an invisible object is loaded with grief and mystery. The face, eerily reminiscent of Egyptian death masks or the metal face shields used in WWI, serves as both a personal relic and a universal symbol of mourning.

Curator Louise Madinier explains that the exhibition deliberately places this work at a narrative turning point. “It’s an object of absence–there’s nothing between the hands, yet the gesture is everything,” she says. “This is where Giacometti starts truly sculpting the void.”

Post-War Bodies and Fragile Existences

The third room of the exhibition focuses on Giacometti’s post-war period–the era of arguably his most iconic signature works. Here, the artist returned to figuration, but through a radically altered lens. Figures stretch, thin out, and dissolve into space, simultaneously monumental and spectral. These are beings in flux, caught between presence and disappearance.

The exhibition’s scenography again reinforces this tension. Very Small Figurine (1937–39) consists of a tiny figure displayed within a large glass case, its scale exaggerated by its environment. The emptiness around it becomes a kind of force field, amplifying its vulnerability. Similarly, Woman with a Cart (1943–45), The Nose (1949), and Large Woman I (1960) all explore how figures might inhabit–or resist–space.

Perhaps the most theatrical display is Woman on a Chariot, set within a circular architectural partition that restricts sightlines and invites discovery. Only upon moving through the space does the viewer encounter the platformed sculpture in full–a deliberate staging that echoes Giacometti’s interest in perception and movement. Light plays a critical role here too. Instead of flattening the forms, the museum’s lighting scheme accentuates textures, drawing out the etched surfaces, gouges, and contours that make Giacometti’s work so tactile.

A Museum Within a Museum

The final room, titled L’Atelier de l’Imaginaire (The Imaginary Museum), is both epilogue and expansion. Inspired by André Malraux’s 1947 book Le Musée Imaginaire, which posits that all of art history can live in the mind’s eye, this space brings Giacometti’s influences full circle. Here, the artist’s drawings and archival documents are presented alongside ancient artifacts and non-Western objects from Marseille’s own Musée d’Arts Africains, Océaniens, et Amérindiens (MAAOA) and the Museum of Mediterranean Archaeology.

Rather than presenting these juxtapositions as hierarchies or appropriations, the curators aim to create a respectful dialogue–one that acknowledges the complexity of influence without collapsing it into caricature. “We didn’t want to reproduce a colonial gaze,” explains Perrin. “Each object is shown for what it is, in conversation with Giacometti’s search for a universal form.”

The room’s inclusion also serves to root Giacometti within Marseille’s Mediterranean identity. As a port city and cultural crossroads, Marseille feels like a fitting host for an artist whose imagination roamed from the Cycladic isles to the Egyptian tomb. Giacometti himself wrote in 1965: “All the art of the past, from all eras, from all civilizations, arises before me; everything is simultaneous as if space took the place of time.” And as Perrin points out, Giacometti himself was a great museum-goer: “He looked everywhere, at every time period, every culture. His work belongs to a global conversation about the human condition.”

A Long-Overdue Encounter

The significance of Sculpter le Vide being held in Marseille cannot be overstated. Despite being France’s second-largest city and home to a rich artistic tradition, this is the first time a major Giacometti exhibition has been presented here. As Perrin notes, “The Museum Cantini is not only the right place architecturally–it also houses works by artists who were close to Giacometti, including André Derain, Balthus, and other Surrealists. He is surrounded by his friends.”

More than just a landmark exhibition, Alberto Giacometti – Sculpter le Vide is a rare opportunity to encounter the artist’s universe up close and in dialogue with the city of Marseille. It invites viewers to pause, to contemplate space not as absence, but as a force in itself. Giacometti’s figures may be skeletal, even ghostly, but they are never hollow. In their solitude, they make the invisible visible. And in their emptiness, they hold everything.

Alberto Giacometti – Sculpter le Vide is at Museum Cantini, Marseille until 28th September, 2025. Co-organised by la Ville de Marseille – Musées de Marseille and la Fondation Giacometti, Paris.