Fondation Giacometti -  [Bust]
AGD 780

[Bust]

Date circa 1947 - 1948

Medium Oil on a cutted canvas mounted on canvas

Dimensions 11,22 x 7,28 in.

Collection Private collection

Description

Giacometti had been making heads and busts in drawing, sculpture and painting since his youth and made them until his death. In the second half of the Forties in particular, he made numerous painted busts: some are real portraits from a model, while others, like this one, are made from memory and the model is no longer recognizable. It is quite possible that it is an image from memory of the artist’s mother, if one judges by the resemblance of that painting with a portrait of the mother kept in the collection of the Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti, dating from around 1948. Here, the face, deprived of any detail, the background simplified by straight lines, the bust barely defined by light contours, make of this figure a kind of ghostly apparition that no longer has anything in common with the portrait in the conventional sense of the term. The quick lines of the drawing, the delicate grey-pink tones bring this bust close to other paintings made by the artist around 1947-1948. The reframing of the background by successive “windows” that fit tightly around the figure is a device widely used by Giacometti. Close to the “cages” that Giacometti often uses in sculpture, these re-framings draw the depth of space in which the head seems to move forward and backward. Like other paintings from the end of the Forties, this one comes from a big canvas of which Giacometti had painted various parts separately before cutting it up into several pieces. Giacometti kept numerous pieces of canvas cut up and unframed that he sometimes pinned on the partition walls of his studios. This painting was given in this state by the artist to Charlotte Weidler, who used to work for the Pittsburgh’ collector G. David Thompson; she used to tour studios when she was travelling in Europe, and recommended pieces to Thompson. Thus, from 1955, Charlotte Weidler regularly met up with Giacometti. Thompson assembled the greatest collection of works by Giacometti owned privately in the artist’s lifetime, especially thanks to his purchases in the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York. Since 1964, his collection has formed the heart of the Alberto Giacometti-Stiftung in Zurich. This canvas, neither signed nor dated, was never exhibited in the artist’s lifetime.

Inscription

No inscription

Provenance

Private collection
Private collection
Sale Christie's New York New York, NY (United States Of America), May 7th, 2008, lot n ° 431
Sale Christie's New York New York, NY (United States Of America), February 5th, 2021, lot n ° 760

Bibliography

Impressionist and Modern Art. Day Sale, New York, NY : Christie's New York, 2008, lot no. 431, p. 194, ill. p. 195

To search for a work, consult the Alberto Giacometti Database