Fondation Giacometti

One recognizes in this drawing the interior of the sitting room in Giacometti’s family home in Stampa, in the canton of Grisons, where Alberto regularly returned each year. The chair, in the centre of the scene, is made of a solid network of lines that enclose it and make it stand out from the background of the room in which one recognizes the wall seat on the right, the table, a small console. The density of the line in the centre of the sheet and the progressive disappearance of the lines as we approach the edges, reproduce the perception of the artist’s gaze. The artist drains his composition of an opening of light through the use of an abrasive rubber that frames even more the chair and modifies the modulations of the light and dark greys that draw the space on the sheet. From the beginning of the Fifties, these depictions of the interior of the rooms in Stampa or the rooms of the Giacometti’s summer house in Maloja, further upstream in the valley, often reappear in the drawing works of Giacometti, who sometimes also included the occupants, his mother until 1963, his wife Annette and sometimes the cook. In some of these drawings, the spatial structure of the room is, as here, underlined by the squaring of the carpet on the floor, and the paintings hanging on the wall. This drawing was published by Giacometti’s Parisian gallery owner Aimé Maeght in May 1954, in issue 65 of his publication Derrière le miroir, that was to accompany the personal exhibition of the artist in his gallery.

Signed and dated with a pencil at the bottom right corner "Alberto Giacometti 54"

Sale Sotheby's Paris Paris (France), December 9th, 2009, lot n ° 81

1984 Balthus, Giacometti, Bonnard. Dessins de collections, Lausanne (Switzerland), Galerie Alice Pauli, from May 17th to July 14th 1984, no. 18
1985 Alberto Giacometti. Dessins, Paris (France), Galerie Claude Bernard, no. 22
1988 Alberto Giacometti. Drawings, New York, NY (United States Of America), Claude Bernard Gallery, from April 21st to May 14th 1988, no. 14
1995 Alberto Giacometti. Sculture. Dipinti. Disegni, Milan (Italy), Palazzo Reale, from January 26th to April 2nd 1995, no. 49
2001 Alberto Giacometti. Le dessin à l'oeuvre, Paris (France), Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, from January 23rd to April 9th 2001, no. 124

SARTRE, in Derrière le Miroir, Giacometti, Paris : Maeght éditeur, Paris, no. 65, may 1954
Balthus. Giacometti. Bonnard, Dessins de colections, Lausanne : Galerie Alice Pauli, 1984, cat. no. 18
Alberto Giacometti. Dessins, Paris : Galerie Claude Bernard, 1985, cat. no. 22
Alberto Giacometti. Drawings, New York, NY : Claude Bernard Gallery, 1988, cat. no. 14
Casimiro DI CRESCENZO, Alberto Giacometti. Sculture. Dipinti. Disegni, Florence : Artificio Edizioni, 1995, cat. no. 49, ill. p. 194
Agnès de LA BEAUMELLE, Alberto Giacometti. Le dessin à l'oeuvre, Paris : Gallimard, 2001 / Paris : Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, 2001, cat. no. 124, p. 238, ill. p. 168
Impressionist & Modern art, Paris : Sotheby's Paris, 2009, lot no. 81