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拍品專文
The Comité Giacometti has confirmed the authenticity of this work. It will be included in the Alberto Giacometti catalogue raisonné being prepared by the Fondation Alberto and Annette Giacometti.
This work will be included in the forthcoming Alberto Giacometti catalogue raisonné being prepared by the Association Alberto and Annette Giacometti and Mary Lisa Palmer.
In 1946, Annette Arm came to Paris to live with Alberto Giacometti. Though he warned her that he would not allow her presence to alter his life, she soon began posing for him, and by 1949, she convinced him to marry her. While Giacometti's mother Annetta initially disapproved of this "young woman from the suburbs of Geneva," she soon warmed to the match. As biographer James Lord recounts, "Annetta thought Annette 'a nice girl,' though she observed that her son treated his wife like a daughter" (in Giacometti, A Biography, New York, 1985, p. 303). As Annette was twenty-two years younger than Alberto, this dynamic was not entirely surprising.
After their marriage, Giacometti brought Annette to visit his mother at the family home in Stampa, Switzerland. The ready presence of these two models encouraged the artist to work from life. While many of his earlier sculptures represent the ideal woman within a void, drawings such as the present ones describe specific women in the context of their actual surroundings. As David Sylvester writes, "Though working at sculpture mostly from memory, he was painting and drawing from life, usually from Diego or Annette in Paris and from Annette or his mother at Stampa" (in Looking at Giacometti, London, 1994, p. 242). This tendency toward realism, initiated through drawing, would soon influence Giacometti's painting and sculpture production.
Herbert C. Lust designates the period in which the present work was executed as the pinnacle of Giacometti's drawing. "As good as the early drawings are," he writes, "their various techniques were not brought to perfection until the years from 1953 to 1955." Lust's description of the artist's drawings as examples of "architectural orchestration" and "transparent construction" can be witnessed in both the recto and verso drawings here (in Alberto Giacometti: The Complete Graphics, San Francisco, 1991, pp. 206-207). Of the various techniques that Lust identifies in Giacometti's post-1940 drawings, "structural erasing" is perhaps the most important to the double study of Annette. In the left-side portrait, especially, Annette's facial structure rests on a heightened white absence. Similarly, the objects on the table relate to each other atop a foundation of erasure. Though less prominent in the verso drawing, such erasures are still present, heightening the room's walls and lending structure to the space.
The present drawings beautifully demonstrate Giacometti's signature dynamism of line; together, they exhibit contrasting ways in which the artist harnessed this kineticism. The recto, double study of Annette is characterized by a tight, almost anxious energy. The tension in these lines imbues the work with an electric charge, and accounts for its greater tonal contrast. The two starkly frontal Annettes are firmly bordered by the room's architecture, and the entire composition is kept from reaching the sheet's borders. Conversely, the verso portrait of the artist's mother is expressed through a looser, lighter application of pencil. Indeed, she is almost swept up in the movement of the composition. Here, the drawing extends unrestricted to the paper's limits.
This work will be included in the forthcoming Alberto Giacometti catalogue raisonné being prepared by the Association Alberto and Annette Giacometti and Mary Lisa Palmer.
In 1946, Annette Arm came to Paris to live with Alberto Giacometti. Though he warned her that he would not allow her presence to alter his life, she soon began posing for him, and by 1949, she convinced him to marry her. While Giacometti's mother Annetta initially disapproved of this "young woman from the suburbs of Geneva," she soon warmed to the match. As biographer James Lord recounts, "Annetta thought Annette 'a nice girl,' though she observed that her son treated his wife like a daughter" (in Giacometti, A Biography, New York, 1985, p. 303). As Annette was twenty-two years younger than Alberto, this dynamic was not entirely surprising.
After their marriage, Giacometti brought Annette to visit his mother at the family home in Stampa, Switzerland. The ready presence of these two models encouraged the artist to work from life. While many of his earlier sculptures represent the ideal woman within a void, drawings such as the present ones describe specific women in the context of their actual surroundings. As David Sylvester writes, "Though working at sculpture mostly from memory, he was painting and drawing from life, usually from Diego or Annette in Paris and from Annette or his mother at Stampa" (in Looking at Giacometti, London, 1994, p. 242). This tendency toward realism, initiated through drawing, would soon influence Giacometti's painting and sculpture production.
Herbert C. Lust designates the period in which the present work was executed as the pinnacle of Giacometti's drawing. "As good as the early drawings are," he writes, "their various techniques were not brought to perfection until the years from 1953 to 1955." Lust's description of the artist's drawings as examples of "architectural orchestration" and "transparent construction" can be witnessed in both the recto and verso drawings here (in Alberto Giacometti: The Complete Graphics, San Francisco, 1991, pp. 206-207). Of the various techniques that Lust identifies in Giacometti's post-1940 drawings, "structural erasing" is perhaps the most important to the double study of Annette. In the left-side portrait, especially, Annette's facial structure rests on a heightened white absence. Similarly, the objects on the table relate to each other atop a foundation of erasure. Though less prominent in the verso drawing, such erasures are still present, heightening the room's walls and lending structure to the space.
The present drawings beautifully demonstrate Giacometti's signature dynamism of line; together, they exhibit contrasting ways in which the artist harnessed this kineticism. The recto, double study of Annette is characterized by a tight, almost anxious energy. The tension in these lines imbues the work with an electric charge, and accounts for its greater tonal contrast. The two starkly frontal Annettes are firmly bordered by the room's architecture, and the entire composition is kept from reaching the sheet's borders. Conversely, the verso portrait of the artist's mother is expressed through a looser, lighter application of pencil. Indeed, she is almost swept up in the movement of the composition. Here, the drawing extends unrestricted to the paper's limits.