Fondation Giacometti

At the beginning of 1958, Alberto Giacometti put the finishing touch to a series of sculptures for an exhibition in the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York, which took place from the 6 to the 31 May 1958. Unlike the series Femmes de Venise from 1956, modelled from clay on metallic armatures, these new sculptures are directly made in fresh plaster. This coarser technique was used by the artist as he was trying to revitalize his expression. The photographs taken in the studio by Inge Morath in 1958 show Giacometti’s researches. As was often the case, he took up an old idea, here that from 1950 treated in La Cage or La Forêt, of characters standing, hieratic like trees, and a “head that takes the place of a stone”. The studio is peopled by women slightly bigger than life-size, and on the floor one can see a head at the tip of a long neck sprouting out of a rectangular platform covered in a thick layer of plaster. It is that head cut from the platform that was the prototype of the one the artist made in a bigger version in 1959-1960 for the monument destined to the Chase Manhattan Plaza. In 1965, the Large Head of 1958 was part of those that Giacometti lined up in his studio to make his selection for the retrospectives of his work in London and New York. It is probably at that time that he added a platform, square and smaller, under the plaster, on the model of the one made for the Large Head in 1960. Giacometti’s interest for partial figures and especially fragments of the human body is an old one. In addition to the cut heads like the Tête sur tige from 1947, he made the same year an arm (The Hand). In 1958, that interest for the fragment led him to make The Leg which he had been thinking about since 1947, and whose plaster one can see on Inge Morath’s photographs. The Large Head is, as was often the case for Giacometti’s plasters, reworked with a penknife then painted with brush strokes to highlight the features of the face. The elongation of the neck emphasizes the autonomous nature of the fragment. This important sculpture, crucial if one wants to understand the genesis of the New York Monument, was produced in bronze by the artist’s widow.

No inscription

Alberto GIACOMETTI
Succession Alberto Giacometti
Fondation 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. 229
2011 L'Invention de l'oeuvre, Rodin et les ambassadeurs, Paris (France), Musée Rodin, from May 6th to September 4th 2011
2013 Alberto Giacometti. Espace, tête, figure, Grenoble (France), Musée de Grenoble, from March 9th to June 9th 2013
2015 Alberto Giacometti au Fonds Hélène et Edouard Leclerc, Landerneau (France), Fonds Hélène & Edouard Leclerc, from June 14th to October 25th 2015
2016 Picasso-Giacomettii, Paris (France), Musée National Picasso, from October 4th 2016 to February 5th 2017
2017 Alberto Giacometti - Tate Modern London, London (United Kingdom), Tate Gallery, from May 10th to September 10th 2017
2018 Giacometti - Bacon, Riehen, Bâle (Switzerland), Fondation Beyeler, from April 29th to September 2nd 2018
2019 Giacometti - Rodin (Gianadda), Martigny (Switzerland), Fondation Pierre Gianadda, from June 27th to November 24th 2019
2020 Rodin - Giacometti, Madrid (Spain), Fundación Mapfre, from February 6th to August 23rd 2020
2021 Alberto Giacometti. Une rétrospective. Le réel merveilleux., MONACO (Monaco), Grimaldi Forum Monaco, from July 3rd to August 29th 2021
2022 Giacometti et le paysage, Paris, Institut Giacometti, from June 22nd to September 18th 2022

Véronique WIESINGER (under the direction of), L'atelier d'Alberto Giacometti, Paris : Fondation Giacometti, 2007 / Paris : Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, 2007, cat. no. 229, pl. 32, ill. p. 48
Dominique VIEVILLE (under the direction of), L'invention de l'oeuvre, Rodin et les ambassadeurs, Arles : Actes Sud, 2011 / Paris : Editions du Musée Rodin, 2011, p. 150, ill. p. 151
Musée de Grenoble. Les Amis du Musée 2012/13, Grenoble : Musée de Grenoble, 2012, ill. p. 22
Véronique WIESINGER, Alberto Giacometti. Espace, tête, figure, Arles : Actes Sud, 2013 / Paris : Fondation Giacometti, 2013 / Grenoble : Musée de Grenoble, 2013, p. 122 & 176, ill. p. 123