«La pauvre face tordue du maître de maison» (study for the illustration of the book Louis Aragon, Les Beaux Quartiers, Tome I, Paris, 1965 opposite to page 160)
Date 1965
Medium Pen and ink on paper
Dimensions 10,62 x 8,22 in.
Collection Private collection
“La pauvre face tordue du maître de maison” (étude pour l’illustration de Louis Aragon, Les Beaux Quartiers, Tome I, Paris, 1965, opposite page 160), 1965
In 1965, Louis Aragon asked Alberto Giacometti – who had already made a portrait of the writer in 1946, but had never illustrated his writings – for drawings to illustrate the edition, at Robert Laffont in the collection “Oeuvres croisées de Louis Aragon et d’Elsa Triolet”, of his new novel “Les Beaux Quartiers”. For this project, as a note explained at the beginning of the book, the artist made works to illustrate precise passages in the novel, which are quoted as captions on the plate reproductions. This drawing is close to that series, offering a version not kept in the publication, of a passage of the novel in which is described the face of the dying master of the house. With a very dense network of lines applied with a pen nib on a fine paper sheet, Giacometti has drawn the tilted back face of the dying man. This close view differs from that which was finally kept for the illustration of the book in which the man appears from the side, fully stretched on his bed, watched over by two other characters.
No inscription
1990 L'Ecriture griffée, Saint-Etienne (France), Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain, from December 6th 1990 to February 25th 1991, no. 122