Fondation Giacometti

Caroline is the pseudonym for a woman of loose morals whom Giacometti met in a bar in Montparnasse in 1958. In 1960 she began sitting for him, and continued to sit regularly until the artist's death. Giacometti painted at least thirty portraits of Caroline and made her bust in 1961. Pursuing the research initiated with Yanaihara's portraits a few years earlier, Caroline's series of portraits represents the ultimate result of an intense work on the portrait and the representation of the face.

In this painting, Giacometti's attention is still focused on the model's head, the core of the image. Caroline's head is repeatedly worked on; the brushstrokes in black, grey and white model the face till it makes its expression very real. Caroline is represented sitting, arms crossed on her legs. Though the head is very well-defined, the rest of the body is a lot less detailed, almost sketched, and disappears around the legs. A “halo” of ochre colour surrounds the figure around the face and shoulders in order to conceal the numerous modifications brought on by the artist in the course of the work.

Several photographic documents show the progression of the work during the years 1962 to 1965. This painting is a very good example of the working method of Alberto Giacometti who used to gradually add, modify and erase some details.
Giacometti began to work on the work Figure I, Caroline at the end of 1961. The photographer Paul Almasy visited the studio at the time and took photographs of the artist at work. Giacometti is surrounded by his works; placed on the floor the painting representing Caroline hadn't been completed yet.
During 1962, Annette Giacometti took photos of the progression of the artist’s work on canvas. The Italian photographer Franco Cianetti published his photographs showing the various phases of the creation of the painting in the magazine “DU”. The work has been reworked on several occasions: the collar of the dress worn by Caroline changes, the hair diminishes in volume and the position of the hands becomes more relaxed.

The work was exhibited between 1962 and 1963 at the Venice Biennial and at the retrospective at the Kunsthaus in Zurich. The painting has now been completed but the photographs taken during the hanging show us a canvas not signed or dated. After being sold in 1964 at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York, the painting was sent back to Europe to be signed and dated. The work was then presented signed and dated at the touring exhibition in the United Stated in 1965 (New York's Museum of Modern Art, Chicago Art Institute, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and San Francisco Museum of Art). The dimensions of the work have also been retouched; the painting has been remounted and has lost 10 cms of white border on both sides.
The circumstances surrounding this reduction are not known. The position of the signature in the right angle indicates the artist himself might have undertaken that change. Nevertheless, it is impossible to verify for the painting was remounted again in 1992.

Signed and dated at the bottom right corner "Alberto Giacometti / 1962"

Pierre Matisse Gallery
Robert B. MAYER
Beatrice C. MAYER
The Robert B. Mayer Family Collection

1962 XXXI Biennale internazionale d'arte, Venice (Italy), Biennale d'arte, from June 16th to October 7th 1962, no. 28
1962 Alberto Giacometti, Zurich (Switzerland), Kunsthaus Zürich, from December 2nd 1962 to January 6th 1963, no. 177
1965 Alberto Giacometti, New York, NY (United States Of America), The Museum of Modern Art, from June 7th to October 10th 1965, no. 104
2013 Art Basel 2013, Basel (Switzerland), from 13th to June 16th 2013

Du, Kulturelle Monatsschrift, Zurich : Verlag Conzett & Huber, no. 252, february 1962, p. 8-12, ill. p. 8-11
Apollo, London, june 2009, p. 54, pl. 12, ill. p. 55
Alberto Giacometti, Zurich : Kunsthaus Zürich, 1962, cat. no. 177
Giacometti, Rome : Editalia. Edizioni d'Italia, 1962, cat. no. 93
XXXI Biennale Internazionale d'Arte, Venezia : La Biennale di Venezia, 1962, cat. no. 28
Peter SELZ, Alberto Giacometti, New York, NY : The Museum of Modern Art, 1965, cat. no. 104, p. 117, ill. p. 104