Femme debout

Details

Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966)
Femme debout
indistinctly signed 'Alberto Giacometti' (lower right)
oil on canvas
21 5/8 x 11 5/8in. (55.5 x 29.5cm.)
Painted circa 1949

Provenance

Diego Giacometti, Paris.
James Lord, London.
A gift from the above; sale, Christie's New York, 17 May 1984, lot 429.

Exhibited

Frankfurt, Schirn Kunsthalle, Alberto Giacometti, Oct. 1998-Jan. 1999, no. 52.
Milan, Fondazione Antonio Mazzotta, I Giacometti, La valle, il mondo, Feb.-March 2000, no. 203.
Mannheim, Kunsthalle, Die Familie Giacometti, June-Sept. 2000, no. 203.
Valencia, IVAM Centre Julio González, El Diálogo Con La Historia Del Arte Alberto Giacometti, Dec. 2000-Feb. 2001, no. 205.
Lausanne, Fondation de l'Hermitage, Alberto Giacometti, oeuvres de la maturité, Feb.-May 2002, no. 33.
Klagenfurt, Stadtgalerie Klagenfurt, Hodler, Giacometti, Dürrenmatt, Sept. 2002-Jan. 2003, no. 111.

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis

Lot Essay

In the decade leading up to 1947, Giacometti painted very little. However, towards the end of the 1940s, with his return to Paris, Giacometti underwent a sort of visual epiphany. Henceforth, his figures took on their characteristic etiolated proportions and he resumed painting. 'It was the moment when reality startled me as never before...I looked at the people in the theatre as if I had never seen them before. And at that moment, I suddenly felt the need to paint, to make sculpture, because photography had never given me a fundamental vision of reality. So, to know I was seeing, it became necessary for me to try to paint' (quoted in exh. cat. Alberto Giacometti, Edinburgh, 1996, p. 28).

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