Barbican announces a series of new exhibitions in collaboration with Fondation Giacometti.
From May 2025, the Barbican Centre, London, will partner with Fondation Giacometti, Paris, for a series of three groundbreaking exhibitions taking place over the course of a year. The exhibitions bring together the practices of three contemporary artists known for their originality and ingenuity, alongside historic works by the Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966). Staged in a newly established, intimate exhibition space within the Barbican, the series launches on 8 May 2025 with an exhibition by Huma Bhabha, followed by Mona Hatoum on 4 September 2025 and Lynda Benglis in February 2026.
Each artist will present a mix of pre-existing and new artworks which resonate with and at times respond directly to Giacometti’s sculptures, opening up new intergenerational connections and dialogues. Following a period of deep engagement with Giacometti’s work at Fondation Giacometti, each artist has been closely involved in the selection of works by the artist to include in their exhibition. It is the first time that Bhabha, Hatoum and Benglis’s sculptures will be seen alongside Giacometti’s works. Each iteration of this series will feature a different group of works by Giacometti including iconic pieces like the Walking Man I (1960) and The Cage (1950).
Giacometti is one of the most significant European sculptors of the 20th century, known for his distinctive, elongated sculptures which experiment with the human form. Some of the most stirring works in his oeuvre were created in the same post-war period in which the Barbican was built. Perceived sometimes as responding to the pain and devastation caused by the Second World War, his works proposed a new perspective on humanity and the collective psyche. This radicality resonates with the utopian principles underpinning the establishment of the Barbican, which sought to explore a new way of thinking and being where the arts were regarded as vital and central to enriching modern living.
Visitors to these exhibitions will observe the exchanges between contemporary art practices and Giacometti’s work that complicate simple interpretations of artistic influence and formal likeness. The invited artists have shared interests in death, fragmentation, the domestic, memory, trauma, the erotic, horror and humour –and manifest their preoccupations in vastly different ways through their own work. It is the exploration of these timeless and existential concerns that forms the connecting threads between the three living artists and Giacometti. Each exhibition considers what occurs at the meeting point of bodies of work that are deeply affective and emotive, responding to the anguish and despair of a wounded world.
Each of the three exhibitions will be £8 to visit and will take place in a new exhibition space within the Barbican.
Dates
8 May to 10 August 2025: Encounters: Giacometti x Huma Bhabha
4 September 2025 to 11 January 2026: Encounters: Giacometti x Mona Hatoum
February – May 2026: Encounters: Giacometti x Lynda Benglis (exact dates to be announced in due course)
Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London, EC2Y 8DS - www.barbican.org.uk
Image: L: Alberto Giacometti holding Three Men Walking, 1940s, Archives Fondation Giacometti © Succession Alberto Giacometti / Adagp, Paris 2024 Photo: anonymous. R: Alberto Giacometti in the studio, Before June 1951, Archives Fondation Giacometti © Succession Alberto Giacometti / Adagp, Paris 2024. Photo: Michel Sima.