Fondation Giacometti

Giacometti portrayed apples countless times, in a cup or in a fruit bowl, on the table in Stampa, on a stool in his Paris studio. The still life with which he began his work – his first painting, done in 1915, represented several apples arranged on a stool in his father’s studio in Stampa – , occupied him particularly in the after-war years and the important series of drawings on that theme have been kept from 1947 and the beginning of the Fifties. He developed on that subject the work typical of still life works – the depiction of the fugacity of time, which underlies the genre, especially in Dutch painting – that he studied in depth in a personal way, the integration of the representation of time by the mesh of lines that are woven between the objects, by the superimposition of the outlines that enclosed them without ever fixing them. On this drawing, a number of apples are presented in a big bowl placed on the table – probably in Stampa, in the family home that he visited regularly. The space is entirely constructed around that block, the rest of the sheet only sketching the edge of the table, and the shading behind the apples.

The drawing is a promised gift from Michael A. Rubenstein to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New Nork.

Signed with a pencil at the bottom right corner "Alberto Giacometti"

John REWALD
Private collection
Private collection
Private collection

1985 Alberto Giacometti. Dessins, Paris (France), Galerie Claude Bernard, no. 66
2010 XXVe Biennale des Antiquaires, Paris (France), Grand Palais, from 15th to September 22nd 2010
2012 Alberto Giacometti. Dessins. En hommage à Claude Pompidou, Paris (France), Galerie Claude Bernard, from December 13th 2012 to February 2nd 2013

Alberto Giacometti. Dessins, Paris : Galerie Claude Bernard, 1985, cat. no. 66, p. 55, ill. p. 55
Louis Gabriel CLAYEUX, Alberto Giacometti. Dessins, Paris : Galerie Claude Bernard, 2012, cat. no. 27, ill. p. 67