Encounters

Barbican presents Encounters: Giacometti x Lynda Benglis, the third and final in a series of three exhibitions organised in collaboration with the Fondation Giacometti, Paris. Subtitled Back at Ya, the exhibition features a never before exhibited body of works by Lynda Benglis (b. 1941, Lake Charles, Louisiana) and historic works by Alberto Giacometti (b.1901-1966, Borgonovo, Switzerland), and will be a highlight of the Barbican’s Spring 2026 season.

Staged in the Barbican’s new Level 2 gallery, the exhibition spans nearly a century of art-making, with works made from bronze, ceramic, plaster, painted stone, and handmade paper. Among the works on display are iconic pieces by Giacometti, such as Half Length of a Man (1965) and Woman with Chariot (1943-45).

Benglis presents almost 30 previously unseen works. Made from handmade paper stretched over chicken wire, these twisting, organic forms are variously embellished with "cast sparkles", painted sparkles, acrylic, watercolour, and coal tempera. Created between 2014–2020, these works have exclusively hung on the walls of Benglis’s studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and this exhibition at the Barbican represents a unique opportunity to view them.

Since the 1960s, Benglis has been celebrated for her free, ecstatic forms that are at once playful and visceral, organic and abstract. Her enduring fascination with process and materiality is one shared by Giacometti. This manifests in Back at Ya as a spirited dialogue between the two artists as the Barbican’s gallery comes to embody the space of the artist studio.

On arrival, visitors encounter Giacometti’s Woman with Chariot, a serene, goddess-like figure created amidst the tumult of the Second World War. Here, Woman with Chariot is accompanied by fragments of Giacometti’s own studio walls, onto which he sketched, carved, and painted ghostly figures, offering a rare glimpse into his process.

Benglis’s spectral white paper forms emerge from the surrounding walls, a continuation of the artist’s exploration of mapping bodily forms onto gallery architecture, which she has previously described as a “pristine and stage-like situation” . Progressing through the exhibition space, the works become increasingly colourful as Giacometti’s painted plasters are shown alongside Benglis’s reflective, sparkle-encrusted sculptures.

Running through both artists’ practices is an interest in the human body. Both artists, working directly with their hands, set up a tension between the boundaries of sculpture and painting, stillness and movement. Where Giacometti’s figures are attenuated, permeated with a sense of distance, isolation, and anxiety, Benglis’s surfaces evoke skin, flesh, and bones and celebrate the erotic capabilities of the body. As both artists’ works incorporate qualities of fragility, ephemerality, weightlessness, and excess, they speak powerfully to the importance of shared human experience in times of turmoil and unrest.

Benglis’s exhibition is preceded by Encounters: Giacometti x Huma Bhabha, 8 May – 10 August 2025 and Encounters: Giacometti x Mona Hatoum, 3 September 2025 – 11 January 2026. Together, the three exhibitions unite the practices of three contemporary artists known for their originality and ingenuity alongside historic works by Alberto Giacometti. Each artist has presented 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.

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 themost stirring works in his oeuvre were created in the same post-war period in which the Barbican was built. Sometimes perceived 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 challenge simple ideas of artistic influence and formal similarity. The invited artists have shared interests in death, fragmentation, the domestic, memory, trauma, the erotic, horror and humour — and manifest these preoccupations in strikingly different ways. 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.

Shanay Jhaveri, Head of Visual Arts at the Barbican, says: “Back at Ya marks the final exhibition in our Encounters: Giacometti series. Having passed through a busy street and a ruined home, we now end up where it all starts in the artist’s studio. Grouped together are fragile, rare plasters by Giacometti and unseen paper wire sculptures by Benglis, foregrounding both artists’ inventive application of paint to their works. For Giacometti and Benglis, the walls of their studio are repositories of inspiration and experimentation. It’s a revelation to behold how the human body emerges from these walls in all its vibrancy and vulnerability.”

Émilie Bouvard, Director of Collections at the Fondation Giacometti, says: “Lynda Benglis’ practice of relief is unique in the way she manages to give a feeling of life to what looks fragile and partial at first. After the confrontation to standing figures by Bhabha, to scenes of death and destruction by Hatoum, the art of Giacometti is finally pervaded through Benglis with the power of life and Eros.”

The Encounters: Giacometti series is generously supported by Blanca and Sunil Hirani, Cockayne Grants for the Arts, a Donor Advised Fund held at The Prism Charitable Trust, and Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne, with additional support from the Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation.

Encounters: Giacometti x Lynda Benglis is generously supported by Pace Gallery with additional support from Thomas Dane Gallery.

Learn more at (opens in a new window) barbican.org.uk.