Lot Essay
In this sculpture, along with the other 1927 Composition, Giacometti attained pure geometric abstraction and demonstrated his mastery of Cubism's geometric and structural language. This sculpture incorporates different, equally complex compositions in both front and rear views, combining a frontal, pictorial approach with sculptural forms and space. Volumetric mass has been thoroughly dissected and reconstructed into a complex interweaving of independent planes and geometric elements. As in many Cubist sculptures, empty space functions as an active component, with open passages having structural roles almost as significant as those of the solid forms. The liberation from traditional sculptural mass was a crucial lesson for Giacometti, setting him on the path toward the openwork and constructed sculptures of 1929-33.
In his sculptures of the late 1920s Giacometti devised a personal vocabulary of geometric forms that recur in various compositions but not always consistently enough to ascribe specific interpretations. Hollow hemispheres often represent heads, as in Man, 1929, but here only one of the three fits that description. In several sculptures linear zig-zag forms occur individually and in a repeated pattern, possibly representing a woman in one instance but purely abstract here. The horizontality of Composition, the two undulating horizontal elements visible in the rear view, and the "head" on top at one side all anticipate Reclining Woman Who Dreams, 1929. Literal interpretation of the geometric forms as figures in Composition is of secondary interest, for the impact of this work results primarily from its formal beauty.
According to art dealer Eberhard Kornfeld, the plaster original was acquired in 1929 by a friend of the artist, and it remained in his collection in Switzerland, virtually forgotten. When it was rediscovered thirty years later, Kornfeld arranged with the artist to have an edition of six numbered bronzes and two proofs cast by M. Pastori, a founder in Geneva whom Giacometti used to cast plasters already located in Switzerland rather than send them to the usual Paris foundries. (exh. cat., Giacometti, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C., 1988, p. 78)
In his sculptures of the late 1920s Giacometti devised a personal vocabulary of geometric forms that recur in various compositions but not always consistently enough to ascribe specific interpretations. Hollow hemispheres often represent heads, as in Man, 1929, but here only one of the three fits that description. In several sculptures linear zig-zag forms occur individually and in a repeated pattern, possibly representing a woman in one instance but purely abstract here. The horizontality of Composition, the two undulating horizontal elements visible in the rear view, and the "head" on top at one side all anticipate Reclining Woman Who Dreams, 1929. Literal interpretation of the geometric forms as figures in Composition is of secondary interest, for the impact of this work results primarily from its formal beauty.
According to art dealer Eberhard Kornfeld, the plaster original was acquired in 1929 by a friend of the artist, and it remained in his collection in Switzerland, virtually forgotten. When it was rediscovered thirty years later, Kornfeld arranged with the artist to have an edition of six numbered bronzes and two proofs cast by M. Pastori, a founder in Geneva whom Giacometti used to cast plasters already located in Switzerland rather than send them to the usual Paris foundries. (exh. cat., Giacometti, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C., 1988, p. 78)