The Palace at 4 a.m.

Alberto Giacometti

1932

A miniature, dreamlike 'palace' made from wood, glass, wire, and string in which Giacometti set out to construct a fragile, surreal architecture of memory and human presence.

You first notice a skeletal house of thin rods and suspended elements—tiny carved figures, a wooden shoe-like form and panes of glass—arranged like a stage of hovering, precarious objects that make the space feel both intimate and uncanny.

Made during Giacometti’s Surrealist phase, the piece translates dream logic into three-dimensional space and helped open modern sculpture to concerns with psychological architecture, absence, and the fragile human figure.

Palette

Art Terms

Sculpture Assemblage Architectural model Avant-garde Figurative Surrealism

Exhibitions

Alberto Giacometti

1965

20th Century Sculpture and Constructions

1942

The Museum Collection of Sculpture

1946

Thirty Sculptors' Drawings

1979