Lot Essay
In 1946, Giacometti returned to painting, a medium which he had all but abandoned in the mid-1920's. During the next two decades, he made hundreds of important oils, the majority portraits of his brother Diego or his wife Annette. The present picture is one of the few from Giacometti's post-war period which, according to Dr. Valerie Fletcher, was painted not from a live model but from a sculpture (V. Fletcher, exh. cat., op. cit., Washington, D.C., 1988, p. 134). Beginning in the late 1940's, Giacometti frequently executed drawings or prints of the sculptures in his studio; large-scale oil paintings like the present one, however, are relatively rare.
Fletcher proposes that Grande figure was painted from a bronze of the same name which Giacometti also executed in 1947. Nearly seven feet tall, this sculpture forms a sharp contrast to the tiny figures which Giacometti produced throughout the war years. The initial cast of Grande figure was exhibited in Giacometti's first post-war exhibition in the United States (at Pierre Matisse Gallery, an early owner of the present picture), and was critical to the establishment of the artist's post-war reputation. Both the oil and the bronze display the elongated proportions which are one of the hallmarks of Giacometti's late work, which David Sylvester explains as follows:
This long slender figure with its broken surface...clearly bears no relation to the real volume of a human body. There is a kind of
core, and outside the core a suggestion of mass dissolving into
space. The volume is confessedly an unknown quantity, by
implication an unknowable quantity...a mysterious and poignant
image of the human head or figure, fragile, lost in space, yet
dominating it. (D. Sylvester, Looking at Giacometti, New York,
1996, p. 5)
The figure in the present painting is simplified and anonymous, enigmatic and remote, with neither the specificity nor the insistent gaze of the paintings which Giacometti made from live models. Its dry, sketchy brushwork also distinguishes it from Giacometti's portraits of Diego and Annette, with their characteristic swirl of urgent, vibrating lines. Citing Giacometti's long-standing interest in Egyptian sculpture and tomb painting, Valerie Fletcher writes about Grande figure, "Giacometti absorbed into his art a comparable hieratic quality and sense of timeless grandeur. Mysteriously iconic, this immobile, nearly faceless figure asserts her presence and commands silent attention" (V. Fletcher, exh. cat., op. cit., Washington, D.C., 1988, p. 132).
Fletcher proposes that Grande figure was painted from a bronze of the same name which Giacometti also executed in 1947. Nearly seven feet tall, this sculpture forms a sharp contrast to the tiny figures which Giacometti produced throughout the war years. The initial cast of Grande figure was exhibited in Giacometti's first post-war exhibition in the United States (at Pierre Matisse Gallery, an early owner of the present picture), and was critical to the establishment of the artist's post-war reputation. Both the oil and the bronze display the elongated proportions which are one of the hallmarks of Giacometti's late work, which David Sylvester explains as follows:
This long slender figure with its broken surface...clearly bears no relation to the real volume of a human body. There is a kind of
core, and outside the core a suggestion of mass dissolving into
space. The volume is confessedly an unknown quantity, by
implication an unknowable quantity...a mysterious and poignant
image of the human head or figure, fragile, lost in space, yet
dominating it. (D. Sylvester, Looking at Giacometti, New York,
1996, p. 5)
The figure in the present painting is simplified and anonymous, enigmatic and remote, with neither the specificity nor the insistent gaze of the paintings which Giacometti made from live models. Its dry, sketchy brushwork also distinguishes it from Giacometti's portraits of Diego and Annette, with their characteristic swirl of urgent, vibrating lines. Citing Giacometti's long-standing interest in Egyptian sculpture and tomb painting, Valerie Fletcher writes about Grande figure, "Giacometti absorbed into his art a comparable hieratic quality and sense of timeless grandeur. Mysteriously iconic, this immobile, nearly faceless figure asserts her presence and commands silent attention" (V. Fletcher, exh. cat., op. cit., Washington, D.C., 1988, p. 132).