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拍品專文
*This lot may be exempt from sales tax as set forth in the Sales Tax Notice in the back of the catalogue.
The Comité Giacometti has confirmed the authenticity of this work. It will be included in the catalogue raisonné being prepared by the Fondation Alberto and Annette Giacometti.
This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné being prepared by the Association Alberto and Annette Giacometti and Mary Lisa Palmer.
By 1950 Giacometti felt that he had exhausted the possibilities inherent in the attenuated, stick-like figures that he made in his "visionary, weightless style" during the late 1940s. These works, already deemed iconic, made him famous in Europe and America, and one reason he sought to move beyond them was to cast off the stifling burden of their success and the expectations that they had fostered in the public eye. Giacometti now sought to reclaim a more realistic and concrete sense of space, without sacrificing the acute degree of expressivity that he had worked so long and hard to achieve. A renewed interest in painting, set in motion by his passion for drawing, proved to be the key in this next stage in his development. Just as he had done in the mid-1930s when he gave up his Surrealist and abstract manner, he worked directly in front of his model, most frequently his wife Annette or, as seen here, his brother Diego.
The intimate nature of these relationships did much to inspire the probing intensity of these new sculptures. The poet Yves Bonnefoy observed: "It is already surprising enough to find an artist at the height of his powers, who in the space of three or four years had sculpted some of the major archetypes of modern art and was immediately recognized as such, practically abandoning this type of creation in order to devote himself to the portraits of a few individuals. Giacometti had indeed chosen the existence of individuals, the here and now as the chief object of his new and future study; and that 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).
Giacometti's very first bust, a sculpture done in plasticine in 1914, depicts Diego, and as Diego was practically an ever-present and absolute constant in his life, it seemed natural and inevitable that he should become the sculptor's most frequent and important model. While most modern artists turned to a wife or lover for their chief inspiration, their woman-as-muse, there was something innately heroic and masculine in Giacometti's rugged and searching approach to the model, in which he continually built up and broke down the plaster image he held in his hands, that often required a male subject. Diego, ever-present, filled this need. He was as close as possible to being a virtual extension of artist himself. Bonnefoy observed, "They were born of the same mother, and Diego, like himself, was 'not of this world' in the ordinary sense. In the presence of someone who is, as it were, his double, Giacometti more than ever is witness to the mystery of existence, like Hamlet thinking of Yorick, in front of a skull in the dust" (ibid., p. 432).
Giacometti subjected Diego to varying degrees of distortion, the essential traits of his brother's identity are always present and easily detectable: the powerful gaze of wide-open eyes, the prominent, slightly upturned nose, full lips, the tall forehead surmounted by a crest of hair. By obsessively concentrating on the particulars of a single individual, Giacometti created a universal man, who would soon become no less iconic than the slender figures of the late 1940s. Patrick Elliott wrote, "One might say that that Diego was to Giacometti what the still-life was to Morandi or Mont-Saint-Victoire to Cézanne. Diego's features were etched on Giacometti's mind and his portraits of other sitters look strangely like Diego." (in Alberto Giacometti 1901-1966, exh. cat., Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery of Art, 1996, p. 23).
The Comité Giacometti has confirmed the authenticity of this work. It will be included in the catalogue raisonné being prepared by the Fondation Alberto and Annette Giacometti.
This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné being prepared by the Association Alberto and Annette Giacometti and Mary Lisa Palmer.
By 1950 Giacometti felt that he had exhausted the possibilities inherent in the attenuated, stick-like figures that he made in his "visionary, weightless style" during the late 1940s. These works, already deemed iconic, made him famous in Europe and America, and one reason he sought to move beyond them was to cast off the stifling burden of their success and the expectations that they had fostered in the public eye. Giacometti now sought to reclaim a more realistic and concrete sense of space, without sacrificing the acute degree of expressivity that he had worked so long and hard to achieve. A renewed interest in painting, set in motion by his passion for drawing, proved to be the key in this next stage in his development. Just as he had done in the mid-1930s when he gave up his Surrealist and abstract manner, he worked directly in front of his model, most frequently his wife Annette or, as seen here, his brother Diego.
The intimate nature of these relationships did much to inspire the probing intensity of these new sculptures. The poet Yves Bonnefoy observed: "It is already surprising enough to find an artist at the height of his powers, who in the space of three or four years had sculpted some of the major archetypes of modern art and was immediately recognized as such, practically abandoning this type of creation in order to devote himself to the portraits of a few individuals. Giacometti had indeed chosen the existence of individuals, the here and now as the chief object of his new and future study; and that 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).
Giacometti's very first bust, a sculpture done in plasticine in 1914, depicts Diego, and as Diego was practically an ever-present and absolute constant in his life, it seemed natural and inevitable that he should become the sculptor's most frequent and important model. While most modern artists turned to a wife or lover for their chief inspiration, their woman-as-muse, there was something innately heroic and masculine in Giacometti's rugged and searching approach to the model, in which he continually built up and broke down the plaster image he held in his hands, that often required a male subject. Diego, ever-present, filled this need. He was as close as possible to being a virtual extension of artist himself. Bonnefoy observed, "They were born of the same mother, and Diego, like himself, was 'not of this world' in the ordinary sense. In the presence of someone who is, as it were, his double, Giacometti more than ever is witness to the mystery of existence, like Hamlet thinking of Yorick, in front of a skull in the dust" (ibid., p. 432).
Giacometti subjected Diego to varying degrees of distortion, the essential traits of his brother's identity are always present and easily detectable: the powerful gaze of wide-open eyes, the prominent, slightly upturned nose, full lips, the tall forehead surmounted by a crest of hair. By obsessively concentrating on the particulars of a single individual, Giacometti created a universal man, who would soon become no less iconic than the slender figures of the late 1940s. Patrick Elliott wrote, "One might say that that Diego was to Giacometti what the still-life was to Morandi or Mont-Saint-Victoire to Cézanne. Diego's features were etched on Giacometti's mind and his portraits of other sitters look strangely like Diego." (in Alberto Giacometti 1901-1966, exh. cat., Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery of Art, 1996, p. 23).