Fondation Giacometti

Alberto Giacometti used to draw and write on all kinds of supports, books, magazines, newspapers and paper tablecloths. The drawings made on newspapers and tablecloths, of which countless copies are known but which, for the most part, were not kept by the artist himself, show again and again Giacometti’s work on the head, face and profile. The shape has become generic, mixing memories of his most regular model, his brother Diego, whose features disappear in the superimposition of traces left by a pencil that does not leave the support during the making. It is therefore difficult to identify the persons represented and one should rather see here studies of a man’s head. On this issue of “Combat”, a publication founded during the Second World War, Giacometti has traced with a black ballpoint pen, two busts full face and two in profile. On the large bust full face, the biggest in the series, the artist insisted on the outlines that envelop the face, deeply mark the sockets by highlighting the gaze. The two busts in profile also take on a common type, with a big nose, slightly hooked, a frank chin and very firm jaws. The insistence with which the artist has retraced all the shapes with a pen, gives those drawings a hypnotic nature that is reinforced by the frontal character of the poses, and reveals the obsession of the artist for the subject. Giacometti has also, as he often did on newspapers or paper tablecloths in restaurant, drawn geometric shapes, not identified, a game on shapes in a free drawing with no apparent subject. This type of drawing has sometimes been given by the artist to his friends, sometimes kept by his wife, Annette, but a large number have disappeared.

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Private collection
Sale Christie's Paris Paris (France), March 23rd, 2018