Diego Giacometti (1902-1985)

The first owner of this drink stand was the Swiss collector Gustav Zumsteg. Until his death in 2005, Zumsteg was one of the most important friends and patrons of the Zurich Kunsthaus, the city's modern art museum. The textile industrialist studied in Paris at the Sorbonne and began his career as an apprentice at Abraham Silk, a supplier of fabrics for the Parisian fashion houses Yves Saint Laurent, Givenchy and Valentino, among others. He later acquired the company. Zumsteg met and befriended artists such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Marc Chagall and throughout his life enjoyed close contact with many artists and dealers in Paris.

Zumsteg was enthralled by the work Diego Giacometti had created for the Maeght Foundation in Saint-Paul-de-Vence and asked the artist and his brother, Alberto, to decorate the bar of his Zurich restaurant, the Krönenhalle. Shortly thereafter, Diego Giacometti "created a unique model of a drink stand for the dining room of the headquarters of Abraham Silk. Around a central axis, he superimposed two wheels holding glass plates where three chimeras are watching, themselves surmounted by bats or vampire bats" (D. Marchesseau, op. cit., p. 72).