Fondation Giacometti

Since childhood, Alberto Giacometti made portraits of his parents, brothers and sisters, and classmates. A cousin of Alberto, Renato Stampa (1904-1978) is represented here as a bust, with a frame pencilled near the edges of the sheet. The drawing is not dated but the style enables us to link it to the countless portraits made in the Twenties. The face shows up in small juxtaposed surfaces that convey the volume occupied in the space by the head and shows Giacometti’s research on the decomposition of the relief of the face in geometrical forms arranged in space. That very original treatment of the flesh, which is analysed and cut in portions of shading and white on the sheet, is found on the drawings of the second part of the Twenties, as in the Self-portrait of the Kupferstichkabinet in Basel. But in this portrait of Renato Stampa, the very geometrical effect of that style is softened by a treatment of shade and light, by shaded and hatched zones that modulate the sharpness of the face’s edges.
Alberto saw his cousin again – whom he had already drawn in the previous decade – during one of his stays in his native canton of Grisons, in Stampa. The drawing has remained in the family collection of the artist in Switzerland, before being acquired from the family by a Swiss gallery. The drawing, from the collection of Bruno Giacometti, Alberto’s second younger brother, was never exhibited or published in the artist’s lifetime.

No inscription

Bruno GIACOMETTI
Private collection
Private collection

1996 Alberto Giacometti 1901-1966, Vienne (Austria), Kunsthalle, from February 24th to May 5th 1996, no. 36
1996 Alberto Giacometti 1901-1966, Edimbourg (United Kingdom), Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, from June 1st to September 22nd 1996, no. 35

Alberto Giacometti 1901-1966, London : Royal Academy of Arts, 1996 / Edimbourg : Trustees of the National Galleries of Scotland, 1996, cat. no. 35, p. 136, ill. p. 136
Christoph DOSWALD, Patrick ELLIOTT, Toni STOOSS (under the direction of), Alberto Giacometti 1901-1966, Stuttgart : Verlag Gerd Hatje, 1996, cat. no. 36, p. 118, 396, ill. p. 119
Patrick ELLIOTT, Toni STOOSS, Alberto Giacometti 1901-1966, Edimbourg : Trustees of the National Galleries of Scotland, 1996, cat. no. 35, p. 136, ill. p. 136
Gotthard JEDLICKA, Alberto Giacometti. Skulpturen, Ölbilder, Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, Grafiken, Zurich : J & P Fine Art, 2006, cat. no. 13, p. 24, ill. p. 25