Fondation Giacometti

The model for this portrait is perhaps one of the villagers from Stampa or one of Alberto’s classmates from the Geneva art school, where he went between 1919 and 1920. This painting moves away from the post-impressionist technique largely used for other portraits of the years between 1914 and 1918 and is closer to some paintings from the beginning of the Twenties, mainly because of the almost sculptural attention given to the volumes. The reliefs of the face – nose, hollows of the eyes, along the cheeks – are depicted by the juxtaposition of colours and by the effects of chiaroscuro. The pink and the green already used for the carnation of several portraits from the previous years are used here in a plain way for the construction of volumes. This sculptural interest for portraits was going to become more pronounced during the Twenties, following Giacometti’s stay in Paris in 1922, where he was to be the pupil of Bourdelle at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, and where he discovered the work of Zadkine, Lipchitz, Brancusi and Laurens, among others. This oil on cardboard was never exhibited in Giacometti’s lifetime.

Signed at the bottom right corner "Alberto Giacometti"

Annette GIACOMETTI
Succession Annette Giacometti
Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti

2007 L'atelier d'Alberto Giacometti, Paris (France), Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, from October 15th 2007 to February 11th 2008, no. 9
2012 Giacometti, Memory and Presence, Charlotte, NC (United States Of America), Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, from August 31st 2012 to January 21st 2013
2017 Alberto Giacometti after the models., Séoul (South Korea), Seoul Arts Center, from December 21st 2017 to April 15th 2018
2019 Alberto Giacometti, D'après le modèle (Prague)., Prague (Czech Republic), Veletržní palác, from July 18th to December 1st 2019
2021 Alberto Giacometti. Une rétrospective. Le réel merveilleux., MONACO (Monaco), Grimaldi Forum Monaco, from July 3rd to August 29th 2021
2022 Sophie Ristelhueber, Paris, Institut Giacometti, from September 27th to November 30th 2022

Véronique WIESINGER (under the direction of), L'atelier d'Alberto Giacometti, Paris : Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti, 2007 / Paris : Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, 2007, cat. no. 9, pl. 298, ill. p. 179