Alberto Giacometti fever is coming to London. The Barbican Centre has announced three “groundbreaking” exhibitions in collaboration with Fondation Giacometti, to take place between May 2025 and May 2026.

Each exhibition in the “Encounters” trio will be staged in a new intimate exhibition space in the Barbican and feature the work of contemporary artists Linda Benglis, Mona Hatoum, and Huma Bhabha respectively, displayed alongside selections of work by the Swiss sculptor. All three artists spent a “period of deep engagement” with Giacometti’s sculptures while visiting Fondation Giacometti in Paris.

Photo: Michel Sima (1951). Archives Fondation Giacometti © Succession Alberto Giacometti / Adagp, Paris 2024.

The first of the exhibitions will launch on May 8 next year. The first of the shows will star the work of Pakistani-American sculptor Bhabha, who is based in New York and has built an international reputation for her sculptural practice which “centers on reinvention of the figure” and often incorporates non-art and found materials.

On September 4, the second exhibition will launch, featuring the work of British-Palestinian multimedia installation artist Hatoum, who lives and works in London and, since the 1990s, has been creating increasingly “large-scale installations that aim to engage the viewer in conflicting emotions of desire and revulsion, fear and fascination.”

The final show, opening in February 2026, revolves around the sculptures of American artist Benglis, who is known for her works made from wax and latex which “are simultaneously playful and visceral, organic, and abstract.”

Each artist will be presenting both pre-existing and new artworks created for the exhibition, often responding directly to work by the Swiss sculptor. The artists played a key role in the selection process of the Giacometti works for their exhibitions. Iconic sculptures by Giacometti including Walking Man I (1960) and The Cage (1950) will be on display at the Barbican during the three exhibitions.

Alberto Giacometti, Walking Man I (1960). © Succession Alberto Giacometti / Adagp, Paris 2024.

Alberto Giacometti was born in 1901 in a small Swiss village, starting his artistic journey in Paris and making valuable contacts as part of André Breton’s Surrealist group in the early 1930s. He is best known for his roughly textured elongated bronze figural sculptures for which he won the grand prize for sculpture at the Venice Biennale in 1962, earning him worldwide acclaim. earning him worldwide acclaim. In 2003, the French Ministry of Culture established his foundation in his and his wife Annette’s name.

Referencing the Barbican’s iconic Brutalist architecture, the director of collections at the Fondation Giacometti, Émilie Bouvard, called the collaboration with the Barbican a “one-of-a-kind opportunity to confront Giacometti’s creation with this unique cultural space whose architecture owes so much to the 1950s.”

Bouvard said that as well as “remembering the past” the exhibitions also look “towards the present, proving once again the fecundity of Giacometti’s creation for today’s living artists, on the solid grounds of human figure, mankind, dream and engagement.”