.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Either for convenience or because of a secret fascination for the people he knew best, Alberto Giacometti always portrayed those closest to him: his mother Annetta, his wife Annette, and his brother Diego. Of all his subjects, however, the latter is the one who most closely accompanied Giacometti throughout his life, from his early attempts at sculpture when still only a boy, until his final years. In 1914—when Giacometti was only thirteen years old—Diego sat for one of the very first sculpted busts made by the would-be artist. That first, perceptive portrait marked the beginning of a long process of scrutiny—over the years that followed, Diego would sit, patient and immobile, in front of his brother, becoming the subject of some of his most significant paintings and sculptures.
“There are certain images that recur regularly throughout Giacometti’s work,” James Lord, one of the artist’s biographers has written. “Of these, the most salient has certainly been the head of Diego, which has come to seem almost an archetypal visage of man. I mentioned this to Alberto, and he replied, ‘That’s normal. Diego’s head is the one I know best. He’s posed for me over a longer period of time and more often than anyone else... So when I sculpt or paint a head from memory it always turns out to be more or less Diego’s head, because Diego’s is the head I've done most often from life…’” (A Giacometti Portrait, New York, 1965, p. 39).
By the time Giacometti conceived Buste d'homme (Diego) in 1959, Diego had become much more than a reliable model. After the Second World War, he had assumed the role of a collaborator and a crucial presence in the daily life of his brother Alberto, sharing his home and studio on the rue Hippolyte-Maindron. A sculptor and designer himself, Diego had an innate understanding of his brother’s craft, as well as a practical approach to assisting in the studio. Each morning, after Alberto had spent the nighttime hours working, Diego entered the studio while his brother slept and made a mold of the previous night’s work, saving it before the sculptor woke and felt the compulsion to destroy it.
Buste d’homme (Diego) is one of a distinctive series of works that Giacometti began at the beginning of the 1950s, depicting Diego clad in a shirt or jacket with a prominent, clearly articulated collar. The present sculpture, conceived at the end of this decade, and cast in the opening years of the next, possesses a robustly assertive aspect, a magisterial and commanding presence that stems as much from Diego’s strong features as from the sculptor’s rugged modeling of his brother’s form. His bust appears as if hewn from rock, “furrowed and scored with holes and chasms like the rocky walls of the Alps,” Yves Bonnefoy has described of these works. “It signifies matter as such, matter in its essential being. And so the bust became an idea almost as much as a presence: the idea of the triumph of being over nothingness” (Alberto Giacometti, Paris, 2012, p. 437).
The expressively textured, overt materiality of Diego’s shoulders and torso in the present work offers a dramatic contrast with the transcendent intensity of his gaze. His neck and head ascend elegantly out of the weighty mass of his body, framed by the dramatic swirl of his collar. Diego’s eyes are encircled with deeply riven, curving lines, literally framing his vision while drawing the viewer in ever closer with an extreme sense of intimacy to meet his deeply set stare. At this time, Giacometti was increasingly obsessed by capturing the eyes of his sitters, seeking to capture and distill something of the intensity of the human gaze rather than an anatomically accurate portrayal of this part of physiognomy. He stated, “One has the desire to sculpt a living person, but there is no doubt that as far as the life within them is concerned, what makes them alive is le regard—the looking of the eyes. It is very important. If the look, that is to say life, becomes the essential concern, then it is the head that is of primary importance. The rest of the body is reduced to the role of antennae making life possible for the person—the life that exists in the cranium” (quoted in H. and M. Matter, Alberto Giacometti Photographed by Herbert Matter, New York, 1987, p. 194).
With his brother’s features so indelibly ingrained within his own psyche—“when he poses for me I don’t recognize him,” the artist once said—Giacometti was able to pursue this career-long quest, imbuing the intense corporeality that he attained from his vigorously worked clay, with a deeper, more essential and universal human presence (quoted in Alberto Giacometti 1901-1966, exh. cat., Scottish National Gallery of Art, Edinburgh, 1996, p. 23). As Yves Bonnefoy has observed, “In the portraits of Diego one senses considerable disquiet, as well as great energy, in the scrutiny of the sitter’s presence, as though Alberto found Diego a source of anxiety: after all, they were born of the same mother, and Diego, like the artist himself, was ‘not of this world’ in the ordinary sense. In the presence of someone who is, as it were, his double, Giacometti more than ever is witness to the mystery of existence, like Hamlet thinking of Yorick, in front of a skull in the dust” (op. cit., 2012, pp. 426 and 432).
“There are certain images that recur regularly throughout Giacometti’s work,” James Lord, one of the artist’s biographers has written. “Of these, the most salient has certainly been the head of Diego, which has come to seem almost an archetypal visage of man. I mentioned this to Alberto, and he replied, ‘That’s normal. Diego’s head is the one I know best. He’s posed for me over a longer period of time and more often than anyone else... So when I sculpt or paint a head from memory it always turns out to be more or less Diego’s head, because Diego’s is the head I've done most often from life…’” (A Giacometti Portrait, New York, 1965, p. 39).
By the time Giacometti conceived Buste d'homme (Diego) in 1959, Diego had become much more than a reliable model. After the Second World War, he had assumed the role of a collaborator and a crucial presence in the daily life of his brother Alberto, sharing his home and studio on the rue Hippolyte-Maindron. A sculptor and designer himself, Diego had an innate understanding of his brother’s craft, as well as a practical approach to assisting in the studio. Each morning, after Alberto had spent the nighttime hours working, Diego entered the studio while his brother slept and made a mold of the previous night’s work, saving it before the sculptor woke and felt the compulsion to destroy it.
Buste d’homme (Diego) is one of a distinctive series of works that Giacometti began at the beginning of the 1950s, depicting Diego clad in a shirt or jacket with a prominent, clearly articulated collar. The present sculpture, conceived at the end of this decade, and cast in the opening years of the next, possesses a robustly assertive aspect, a magisterial and commanding presence that stems as much from Diego’s strong features as from the sculptor’s rugged modeling of his brother’s form. His bust appears as if hewn from rock, “furrowed and scored with holes and chasms like the rocky walls of the Alps,” Yves Bonnefoy has described of these works. “It signifies matter as such, matter in its essential being. And so the bust became an idea almost as much as a presence: the idea of the triumph of being over nothingness” (Alberto Giacometti, Paris, 2012, p. 437).
The expressively textured, overt materiality of Diego’s shoulders and torso in the present work offers a dramatic contrast with the transcendent intensity of his gaze. His neck and head ascend elegantly out of the weighty mass of his body, framed by the dramatic swirl of his collar. Diego’s eyes are encircled with deeply riven, curving lines, literally framing his vision while drawing the viewer in ever closer with an extreme sense of intimacy to meet his deeply set stare. At this time, Giacometti was increasingly obsessed by capturing the eyes of his sitters, seeking to capture and distill something of the intensity of the human gaze rather than an anatomically accurate portrayal of this part of physiognomy. He stated, “One has the desire to sculpt a living person, but there is no doubt that as far as the life within them is concerned, what makes them alive is le regard—the looking of the eyes. It is very important. If the look, that is to say life, becomes the essential concern, then it is the head that is of primary importance. The rest of the body is reduced to the role of antennae making life possible for the person—the life that exists in the cranium” (quoted in H. and M. Matter, Alberto Giacometti Photographed by Herbert Matter, New York, 1987, p. 194).
With his brother’s features so indelibly ingrained within his own psyche—“when he poses for me I don’t recognize him,” the artist once said—Giacometti was able to pursue this career-long quest, imbuing the intense corporeality that he attained from his vigorously worked clay, with a deeper, more essential and universal human presence (quoted in Alberto Giacometti 1901-1966, exh. cat., Scottish National Gallery of Art, Edinburgh, 1996, p. 23). As Yves Bonnefoy has observed, “In the portraits of Diego one senses considerable disquiet, as well as great energy, in the scrutiny of the sitter’s presence, as though Alberto found Diego a source of anxiety: after all, they were born of the same mother, and Diego, like the artist himself, was ‘not of this world’ in the ordinary sense. In the presence of someone who is, as it were, his double, Giacometti more than ever is witness to the mystery of existence, like Hamlet thinking of Yorick, in front of a skull in the dust” (op. cit., 2012, pp. 426 and 432).