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Lot Essay
The Comité Giacometti has confirmed the authenticity of this sculpture. 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.
Femme debout is related to the large female figures that Giacometti created for a sculpture project to be installed in the plaza in front of the Chase Manhattan Bank building in the Financial District of lower Manhattan. In 1958, when the sixty story tower was still in its planning stages, Gordon Bunshaft, the project's architect, convened a committee of leading museum curators, including Alfred H. Barr, Jr., and James Johnson Sweeney, who asked Giacometti to submit designs for what would be the first modernist art project in the Wall Street vicinity. Working from a model of the space, Giacometti conceived a multi-figure grouping, consisting of a striding male figure, a standing woman and a large male head. By 1960, working within the small confines of his Paris studio, he had completed the plasters of four nude standing female figures, two walking men, and a monumental male head.
The female figures, titled Grande femme debout in versions I-IV (fig. 1), average about nine feet in height. They stand ramrod straight on large feet, with their arms pressed to their sides. Their pelvic regions, which are unusually ample for Giacometti's women, are the focal center of the figure. The breasts above, while not large, sag downward, surmounted by right-angled shoulders and a head held erect and staring forward. The present Femme debout represents an early conception of this figure. It is far more attenuated than any of the Grande femme debout series; indeed, it stems from the famed Femmes de Venise of 1956, and even looks back to the iconic stick-like figures of the late 1940s. The broadest physical feature in Femme debout is the figure's shoulders--Giacometti has left them bereft of their descending arms, which the extreme thinness of the figure could have only awkwardly supported. The protuberances on the tall, narrow line of this standing woman are exquisitely balanced, so that she seems complete despite her armless state, like a radical modernist take on the Vénus de Milo (compare Maillol's Nymphe sans bras, and note that artist's comments, lot 77).
Giacometti pondered which combination of the large male and female figures he would use for the Chase Manhattan project. He showed a grouping of the male bust, two walking men, and two standing women at the 1962 Venice Biennale. Two years later, he used the same figures, differently placed, in an installation at the Fondation Maeght in Vence. He did not, however, submit a final proposal to the New York committee. The Chase Manhattan tower was completed in 1964. Late in the next year Giacometti finally came to New York, his first visit to the city, on the occasion of his retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art. He visited the Chase Manhattan Plaza site, which rekindled his interest in the project. He now considered creating a single figure only, a truly monumental sculpture that would be a least 23 feet tall. Upon his return to Paris, he had his brother Diego fabricate an armature for the huge sculpture. Work on the figure progressed no further, however, as Giacometti became ill in late 1965 and died in January 1966. Four Trees, an aluminum sculpture by Jean Dubuffet that measures forty-two feet in height, was installed on Chase Manhattan Plaza in 1972.
(fig. 1) Alberto Giacometti, Grande femme debout, 1960. Sold, Christie's, New York, 14 November 1990, lot 37. BARCODE 20627683
This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné being prepared by the Association Alberto and Annette Giacometti and Mary Lisa Palmer.
Femme debout is related to the large female figures that Giacometti created for a sculpture project to be installed in the plaza in front of the Chase Manhattan Bank building in the Financial District of lower Manhattan. In 1958, when the sixty story tower was still in its planning stages, Gordon Bunshaft, the project's architect, convened a committee of leading museum curators, including Alfred H. Barr, Jr., and James Johnson Sweeney, who asked Giacometti to submit designs for what would be the first modernist art project in the Wall Street vicinity. Working from a model of the space, Giacometti conceived a multi-figure grouping, consisting of a striding male figure, a standing woman and a large male head. By 1960, working within the small confines of his Paris studio, he had completed the plasters of four nude standing female figures, two walking men, and a monumental male head.
The female figures, titled Grande femme debout in versions I-IV (fig. 1), average about nine feet in height. They stand ramrod straight on large feet, with their arms pressed to their sides. Their pelvic regions, which are unusually ample for Giacometti's women, are the focal center of the figure. The breasts above, while not large, sag downward, surmounted by right-angled shoulders and a head held erect and staring forward. The present Femme debout represents an early conception of this figure. It is far more attenuated than any of the Grande femme debout series; indeed, it stems from the famed Femmes de Venise of 1956, and even looks back to the iconic stick-like figures of the late 1940s. The broadest physical feature in Femme debout is the figure's shoulders--Giacometti has left them bereft of their descending arms, which the extreme thinness of the figure could have only awkwardly supported. The protuberances on the tall, narrow line of this standing woman are exquisitely balanced, so that she seems complete despite her armless state, like a radical modernist take on the Vénus de Milo (compare Maillol's Nymphe sans bras, and note that artist's comments, lot 77).
Giacometti pondered which combination of the large male and female figures he would use for the Chase Manhattan project. He showed a grouping of the male bust, two walking men, and two standing women at the 1962 Venice Biennale. Two years later, he used the same figures, differently placed, in an installation at the Fondation Maeght in Vence. He did not, however, submit a final proposal to the New York committee. The Chase Manhattan tower was completed in 1964. Late in the next year Giacometti finally came to New York, his first visit to the city, on the occasion of his retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art. He visited the Chase Manhattan Plaza site, which rekindled his interest in the project. He now considered creating a single figure only, a truly monumental sculpture that would be a least 23 feet tall. Upon his return to Paris, he had his brother Diego fabricate an armature for the huge sculpture. Work on the figure progressed no further, however, as Giacometti became ill in late 1965 and died in January 1966. Four Trees, an aluminum sculpture by Jean Dubuffet that measures forty-two feet in height, was installed on Chase Manhattan Plaza in 1972.
(fig. 1) Alberto Giacometti, Grande femme debout, 1960. Sold, Christie's, New York, 14 November 1990, lot 37. BARCODE 20627683