Fondation Giacometti

Collectors and patrons of the arts of the surrealists, the Viscount and Viscountess Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles were among the first collectors of Giacometti. Among other things they bought the “Gazing Head” as early as 1929, during an exhibition at the Galerie Jeanne Bucher which introduced Giacometti into the surrealist entourage, and they commissioned the artist with a stone figure for the garden of their villa at Hyères (1930-1932). Giacometti remained very close to the Noailles even after he left the surrealist movement in 1935. He made a series of portraits of Marie-Laure Noailles as drawing and sculpture in 1946 and 1947. This portrait can be dated from around 1946, just after Giacometti returned to Paris in September 1945, coming from Switzerland where he had lived during the war. It is one of a group of sculptures made at the time, before the artist found in 1947 the elongated style that was to make him famous. Since 1938 Giacometti had been making sculptures of very small size: “I was doing it despite myself. I didn’t understand. I began big and finished miniscule. Only the minuscule appeared to me to have some likeness,” the artist said in an interview in 1951. Though the small size of the character conveys the reduced dimension of a figure, when one sees it at a certain distance, the large pedestal was used by the artist as a way to re-establish a just relation of proportion between the figure and the space that surrounds it. The bust and the neck of the model are barely sketched, as if they were springing out of the volume of the pedestal itself. The face is described with essential lines, and very little detail. In spite of that and the very small size of the work, the features of Marie-Laure de Noailles – her oval face and elongated nose – are easily recognizable. Never exhibited in the artist’s lifetime, it was not until 1973 that the plaster of this work was cast in bronze.

Signature and cast number engraved on side of the base to its proper right "A. GIACOMETTI / 4/8"

Annette GIACOMETTI
Succession Annette Giacometti
Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti

1994 Alberto Giacometti. Skulpturer. Mälningar. Teckningar, Malmö (Sweden), Malmö Konsthall, from October 29th 1994 to January 22nd 1995
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. 136
2009 Giacometti, Balthus, Skira. Les années Labyrinthe (1944-1946), Geneva (Switzerland), Musée Rath, from April 9th to July 5th 2009
2010 Charles et Marie-Laure de Noailles, une vie de mécènes, Hyères (France), Villa Noailles, from July 2nd 2010 to July 1st 2011
2011 Alberto Giacometti. Una retrospectiva. Colección de la Fundación Alberto y Annette Giacometti, Malaga (Spain), Museo Picasso, from October 17th 2011 to February 5th 2012
2012 Alberto Giacometti. Coleção da Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti, Paris, Sao Paulo (Brazil), Pinacoteca do estado, from March 24th to June 17th 2012
2012 Alberto Giacometti. Coleção da Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti, Paris, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Museu de Arte Moderna, from July 17th to September 16th 2012
2015 Alberto Giacometti au Fonds Hélène et Edouard Leclerc, Landerneau (France), Fonds Hélène & Edouard Leclerc, from June 14th to October 25th 2015
2016 Alberto Giacometti retrospective at Yuz Museum, Shanghai (China), The Shanghai Yuz Museum, from March 22nd to July 31st 2016
2017 Alberto Giacometti - Tate Modern London, London (United Kingdom), Tate Gallery, from May 10th to September 10th 2017
2017 Rodin - Brancusi - Carl André : Le Socle., Tourcoing, MUBA Eugène Leroy, from October 12th 2017 to January 8th 2018
2018 Alberto Giacometti Retrospective Québec, Quebec (Canada), Musée National des Beaux Arts du Québec, from February 8th to May 13th 2018
2018 Giacometti Retrospective Guggenheim New York, New York, NY (United States Of America), The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, from June 8th to September 12th 2018
2018 Giacometti Restrospective Bilbao, Bilbao (Spain), Guggenheim Museum, from October 19th 2018 to February 24th 2019
2019 Alberto Giacometti Une aventure moderne, Villeneuve d'Ascq (France), LaM, Lille Métropole Musée d'art moderne d'art contemporain et d'art brut, from March 11th to June 11th 2019
2019 Alberto Giacometti, D'après le modèle (Prague)., Prague (Czech Republic), Veletržní palác, from July 18th to December 1st 2019
2021 Barbara Chase-Riboud / Alberto Giacometti, Paris (France), Institut Giacometti, from October 20th 2021 to January 9th 2022
2022 Douglas Gordon, The Morning After, Paris (France), Institut Giacometti, from April 20th to June 12th 2022
2023 Alberto Giacometti: Beginning, again., Tel Aviv (Israel), Tel Aviv Museum of Art, from April 30th to October 7th 2023
2024 Alberto Giacometti – What Meets the Eye., Copenhague (Denmark), Statens Museum for Kunst, from February 10th to May 20th 2024
2025 Beauvoir, Sartre, Giacometti. Vertiges de l'Absolu. , Paris (France), Institut Giacometti, from June 19th to October 12th 2025

Sune NORDGREN (under the direction of), Alberto Giacometti. Skulpturer. Mälningar. Teckningar, Stockholm : Raster Förlag, 1994, p. 95 et 221, ill. p. 95
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. 136
Véronique WIESINGER (under the direction of), Giacometti, Sao Paulo : Cosac & Naify Ediçoes, 2012, ill. p. 369
Véronique WIESINGER (under the direction of), Alberto Giacometti. A Retrospective, Barcelona : Ediciones Poligrafa, 2012 / Malaga : Museo Picasso, 2012, ill. p. 52
Véronique WIESINGER (under the direction of), Alberto Giacometti. Una retrospectiva, Barcelona : Ediciones Poligrafa, 2012 / Malaga : Museo Picasso, 2012, ill. p. 52
Timothy MATHEWS, Alberto Giacometti. The Art of Relation, London : I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2014, pl. 20, ill. p. 120