Fondation Giacometti

The bunch of flowers is a theme frequently used in Alberto Giacometti’s drawings and engravings. On this drawing, he depicts five daffodils arranged in a vase, perhaps one of those belonging to the Giacometti family in Stampa. The composition occupies the whole sheet, torn from a block of writing paper. Alberto Giacometti made a series of drawings of bunches of flowers around 1952, in black ink on very fine writing paper, among them two are very similar to this drawing (coll. FAAG, Paris, and private coll. subsequently dated from 1960, which must refer to the date of the donation). The strokes are superimposed on the outlines of the flowers and the vase, underlining the geometric forms. The three drawings of this series clearly show the artist’s approach, as he was in the grip of a real “obsession” with his subject, to take up the word he himself used in an article on Callot, Goya and Gericault, published in the magazine Labyrinthe (n°7, 15 April 1945). The drawing, which has never been exhibited nor reproduced in the artist’s lifetime, was offered to Alice Tériade, wife of the publisher whom Giacometti had known since the Twenties, and to whose publications he sometimes collaborated, for example in 1952 for the issue 27-28 of the magazine Verve, for which he made two lithographs and wrote the text “Mai 1920” in which he narrated a journey to Italy whose discoveries had an effect upon him.

No inscription

Alice TERIADE
Private collection

1990 Alberto Giacometti, Tokyo (Japan), Musée Kiyoharu Shirakaba, from October 27th to November 25th 1990, no. 53

Shigeo CHIBA, Eiji USAMI, Alberto Giacometti, Tokyo : Musée Kiyoharu Shirakaba, 1990, cat. no. 53
Alberto Giacometti, 26 drawings from the Tériade Collection, London : Berggruen & Zevi Limited, 1993, cat. no. 22, p. 56, ill. p. 57