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Lot Essay
The Comité Giacometti has confirmed the authenticity of this sculpture. It will be included in the catalogue raisonné being prepared by the Fondation Alberto and Annette Giacometti.
The Association Alberto and Annette Giacometti has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
Giacometti arrived at his iconic manner of attenuated, stick-like human figures in 1947. The works of this visionary, weightless style communicated the shared anxieties of the post-war sensibility with the shock of immediate recognition, and Giacometti quickly became famous in Europe and America. However, by 1950 the artist suspected that he had nearly exhausted the possibilities of this approach, and he sought to reclaim a more realistic and concrete sense of space, without sacrificing the acute degree of expressivity that he had worked so hard to achieve. A renewed interest in painting, set in motion by his unceasing involvement in drawing, proved to be the key to this next stage in his development. He worked directly in front of his model, most frequently his wife Annette or his brother Diego, and indeed the intimacy of these emotional relationships did much to inspire the probing intensity of these portraits. The poet Yves Bonnefoy observed: "Giacometti had indeed chosen the existence of individuals, the here and now as the chief object of his new and future study...he instinctively realized that this object transcended all artistic signs and representations, since it was no less than life itself" (in Alberto Giacometti, A Biography of his Work, Paris, 1991, p. 369).
The lessons of these life studies quickly had an impact on Giacometti's sculpture. In 1951, the artist began a series of heads and busts of Diego, which includes the present work, in which the fragility of the tenuous, elongated figures done during the previous several years gave way to a new affirmation of the physical and emotional presence of his subjects. The distortions of form that he now employed were no less dramatic than before. This is apparent here in the side-wise flattening of Diego's head, giving it a blade-like appearance, which Giacometti contrasted with the frontal flattening of his upper body and the even broader mass of the base. In this way the essential characteristics of the center line of Diego's face--his eyes, nose, mouth and chin--have been preserved, while all other non-essential mass has been cut away.
The flattened head teases the viewer with an inescapable dichotomy. Giacometti urges us to view the sculpture frontally, face-to-face, as he confronted his model, or as we encounter another person. However, Diego's distinctive features are only readable from the side, from which direction the mass of the body appears minimized. This play with perceptualization is an essential element in the Diego series.
"For Giacometti it was the essential presence of the human being, as it appears to the artist, that he sought to grasp--the ceaseless dialogue between seeing and the seen, eye and hand, in which form continuously grows and dissolves" (C. Klemm, Alberto Giacometti, exh. cat. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2001, p. 222).
The Association Alberto and Annette Giacometti has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
Giacometti arrived at his iconic manner of attenuated, stick-like human figures in 1947. The works of this visionary, weightless style communicated the shared anxieties of the post-war sensibility with the shock of immediate recognition, and Giacometti quickly became famous in Europe and America. However, by 1950 the artist suspected that he had nearly exhausted the possibilities of this approach, and he sought to reclaim a more realistic and concrete sense of space, without sacrificing the acute degree of expressivity that he had worked so hard to achieve. A renewed interest in painting, set in motion by his unceasing involvement in drawing, proved to be the key to this next stage in his development. He worked directly in front of his model, most frequently his wife Annette or his brother Diego, and indeed the intimacy of these emotional relationships did much to inspire the probing intensity of these portraits. The poet Yves Bonnefoy observed: "Giacometti had indeed chosen the existence of individuals, the here and now as the chief object of his new and future study...he instinctively realized that this object transcended all artistic signs and representations, since it was no less than life itself" (in Alberto Giacometti, A Biography of his Work, Paris, 1991, p. 369).
The lessons of these life studies quickly had an impact on Giacometti's sculpture. In 1951, the artist began a series of heads and busts of Diego, which includes the present work, in which the fragility of the tenuous, elongated figures done during the previous several years gave way to a new affirmation of the physical and emotional presence of his subjects. The distortions of form that he now employed were no less dramatic than before. This is apparent here in the side-wise flattening of Diego's head, giving it a blade-like appearance, which Giacometti contrasted with the frontal flattening of his upper body and the even broader mass of the base. In this way the essential characteristics of the center line of Diego's face--his eyes, nose, mouth and chin--have been preserved, while all other non-essential mass has been cut away.
The flattened head teases the viewer with an inescapable dichotomy. Giacometti urges us to view the sculpture frontally, face-to-face, as he confronted his model, or as we encounter another person. However, Diego's distinctive features are only readable from the side, from which direction the mass of the body appears minimized. This play with perceptualization is an essential element in the Diego series.
"For Giacometti it was the essential presence of the human being, as it appears to the artist, that he sought to grasp--the ceaseless dialogue between seeing and the seen, eye and hand, in which form continuously grows and dissolves" (C. Klemm, Alberto Giacometti, exh. cat. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2001, p. 222).