Lot Essay
In 1962, Giacometti executed eight bronze busts of his wife, Annette, adding a ninth to the series in 1964 and a tenth in 1965. With its strained pose and violent modeling, Annette IV exemplifies the overtly expressionist style of Giacometti's late years, forming a striking contrast to the relatively restrained bronzes of his brother Diego which the artist executed in the preceding decade.
The narrowness of the head which characterizes Giacometti's sculptures of Diego in the 1950s gives way in the series of Annette to a dramatic broadening of the face, a change which has been attributed to the artist's relationship with his wife. "What a difference between these faces and the busts made between 1950 and 1959 as though his impression of his brother was immediately and only metaphysical intuition, a pure presence for Annette is recognized 'as she is,' namely in the variety of aspects and aspirations, feelings and cares that makes up a person day after day, and the miracle is that the more freely she can be herselfthe more conscious we are of the mystery of her presence on earth" (Y. Bonnefoy, op. cit., p. 510).
In Annette IV, the slender neck surges upward from the gouged, rocky torso as if to channel all the sculpture's energy into this newly widened head. The pure physicality which Bonnefoy feels in the bust of Annette derives in large part from the subject's unwavering, almost hypnotic, gaze, staring straight back at the viewer with a knife-like intensity. So strong is Annette's stare in Giacometti's late sculptures that the spectator is drawn into a reciprocal relationship with the bronze subject. As David Sylvester explains:
It is clear in all his work that when Giacometti talks about the gaze as the very sign of life he is talking about a gaze directed straight back at the beholder, mirroring his gaze. Face to face with a Giacometti image, I feel within my muscles the stance of the figure, feel I am adopting the same stance, feel this so strongly that sometimes I find myself doing so in reality But, however strongly I feel the figure's action within myself, I never--as one normally does when one feels this--feel myself identified with the figures, never have the sensation of losing myself in it. [This] confrontation seems to say that the reality of a person is only established through his relation to another but that this relation reveals the solitude of each, the intraversible distance between them, recognizes that this other is projection or extension of oneself or creature subject to oneself but a being separate from oneself (D. Sylvester in exh. cat., Alberto Giacometti: Sculpture, Paintings, Drawings, 1913-1965, Tate Gallery, London, 1965)
The narrowness of the head which characterizes Giacometti's sculptures of Diego in the 1950s gives way in the series of Annette to a dramatic broadening of the face, a change which has been attributed to the artist's relationship with his wife. "What a difference between these faces and the busts made between 1950 and 1959 as though his impression of his brother was immediately and only metaphysical intuition, a pure presence for Annette is recognized 'as she is,' namely in the variety of aspects and aspirations, feelings and cares that makes up a person day after day, and the miracle is that the more freely she can be herselfthe more conscious we are of the mystery of her presence on earth" (Y. Bonnefoy, op. cit., p. 510).
In Annette IV, the slender neck surges upward from the gouged, rocky torso as if to channel all the sculpture's energy into this newly widened head. The pure physicality which Bonnefoy feels in the bust of Annette derives in large part from the subject's unwavering, almost hypnotic, gaze, staring straight back at the viewer with a knife-like intensity. So strong is Annette's stare in Giacometti's late sculptures that the spectator is drawn into a reciprocal relationship with the bronze subject. As David Sylvester explains:
It is clear in all his work that when Giacometti talks about the gaze as the very sign of life he is talking about a gaze directed straight back at the beholder, mirroring his gaze. Face to face with a Giacometti image, I feel within my muscles the stance of the figure, feel I am adopting the same stance, feel this so strongly that sometimes I find myself doing so in reality But, however strongly I feel the figure's action within myself, I never--as one normally does when one feels this--feel myself identified with the figures, never have the sensation of losing myself in it. [This] confrontation seems to say that the reality of a person is only established through his relation to another but that this relation reveals the solitude of each, the intraversible distance between them, recognizes that this other is projection or extension of oneself or creature subject to oneself but a being separate from oneself (D. Sylvester in exh. cat., Alberto Giacometti: Sculpture, Paintings, Drawings, 1913-1965, Tate Gallery, London, 1965)