Between 1948 and 1950, Giacometti executed a series of multi-figure compositions that are some of the undisputed masterpieces of his career and that stand out in the annals of art history as veritable icons of modernism.

With their frail and emaciated figures, the sculptures have often been interpreted as an expression of the isolation and instability of the modern age. They also represent the artist's most sustained and searching exploration of themes that preoccupied him throughout his life: sexual difference, urban space, and the structural conditions of vision.

Sale 1229, Lot 21
Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966)
La clairière
Conceived in 1950; this bronze version cast in 1950
Painted bronze
Estimate: $8,000,000-12,000,000

With nine gaunt female figures on a sloping rectangular base, the present work, La clairière (The glade), is one of the most celebrated and recognizable of this important group of sculptures.

Giacometti himself provided three different explanations for the genesis of La clairière. In a letter to his dealer, Pierre Matisse, he insisted that the composition was a matter of chance, arising from a group of figures that he had placed haphazardly on the floor while clearing off a table in his studio.

On another occasion, Giacometti commented that the forest of standing women reminded him of a tree-lined glade in his hometown of Stampa - hence, the conventional title.

Finally, he recalled that the sculptures of this period were prompted by his experiences at Le Sphinx, the famous Montparnasse brothel he visited regularly before it was shut down in 1946.

With their undeniable physicality, the nude figures in La clairière might well be prostitutes poised for a customer's appraisal. Their cracked and striated skins suggest ravaged flesh, while the touches of paint used to articulate their lips and breasts endow them with an element of frank eroticism. At the same time, however, the women seem remote and unattainable, their postures frontal and hieratic, their bodies weightless and incorporeal.

The distinctive, elongated figures in La clairière also provide a superb illustration of Giacometti's life-long interest in the phenomena of vision and representation.

Asked about the trademark proportions of his post-war sculptures, Giacometti explained them as part of his effort to render the human body not as he knew it to be but as he actually saw it - that is, at a distance.

The disparities of scale that lend La clairière such an uncanny and enigmatic overtone are especially significant in this light. As Giacometti once proclaimed, 'The works that I find most true to reality are those that are considered the least.'

The present cast of La clairière, which is notable for its subtle and expressive, painted surface, was featured in a major American retrospective of Giacometti's work in 1966, the year of his death.


Laura Klar, Ph.D. candidate, History of Art, New York University


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