Fondation Giacometti

Alberto Giacometti used blank paper as much as pages of books, magazines, newspapers, even bits of paper tablecloths, to make these drawings. From that intense production, which attests to the place he gave to drawing in his existence, in order to help him understand what he saw, few works have been kept, more often than not thanks to intimates of the artist who kept those drawings or to whom Giacometti gave them. These heads have thus been drawn on the back cover of the magazine “La Table Ronde”, the second issue of February 1948, on the last page that has been detached from the rest of the magazine. The drawing has been restored – one can see that the edges of the page that were torn have been strengthened – a restoration that altered the nature of the face drawn, by flattening the contours, harmonizing and softening the traces of the pencil. Despite that treatment, the artist’s work can be recognized in the obsession with which he works out the faces – particularly the man’s head at the top centre, whose features have been applied with such intensity that the surface of the paper itself has been weakened, as we can also see on several other drawings. The faces do not refer to particular people, even though one can recognize Annette’s features in the bust on the bottom left, but are rather stylisations, on a generic mode, of the human figure whose representation is at the heart of Giacometti’s work. This drawing was never exhibited or reproduced in the artist’s lifetime.

No inscription

Sale Galerie Kornfeld Berne (Switzerland), June 17th, 2010, lot n ° 331

74 Auktion, Zurich : Philippe Schuler Versteigerungen AG, 1999, lot no. 3027
Kunstwerke des 19. Und 20. Jahrhunderts, Gegenwartskunst. Teil II, Berne : Galerie Kornfeld, 2010, lot no. 331, p. 78