ALBERTO GIACOMETTI, (1901-1966)
Tête
Tête
signed 'A Giacometti' (lower right)
colored pencil and pencil on paper
5 9/16 x 4 3/16 in (14.2 x 10.6 cm)
Executed circa 1950
The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by the Comité Giacometti. It is recorded in the online Alberto Giacometti Database as AGD 4236.
Provenance
B. C. Holland Gallery, Chicago, no. C84-9-4 (by 1994).
Private collection.
Acquired by the present owner in 2020.
"A blind man is feeling his way in the night"
- The first line of a poem Alberto Giacometti wrote when asked to write about himself, quoted in D. Sylvester, Looking at Giacometti, New York, 1994, p. 110.
Rendered with frenzied, swirling lines of red, blue, black and yellow, the present lot emphasizes an important technique of Alberto Giacometti's late period. Giacometti mastered all media – sculpture, drawing, and painting – but his exploration of the human figure is most obvious in his drawings, which exude the same feverish energy as his sculptures. Tête reveals the artist's confident handling of the pencil, and his expressive ability as draftsman to reveal his hand and process. Despite his mastery of multiple media, Giacometti declared that "One has to focus uniquely and exclusively on drawing. If one could master drawing, everything else could be possible" (Alberto Giacometti quoted in J. Lord, Dessins de Giacometti, Paris, 1971, p. 26). Intensely introspective, Tête is a revelation of Giacometti's exploratory genius as a draftsman.
Executed circa 1950, Tête shows an elongated head and neck floating atop a tangled network of sprawling lines against a vast expanse of paper. Detached from its corporeal support, Giacometti's delicate, yet incisive use of line not only gives vigorous definition to the figure's features, but also forcefully builds the perspectival focus, leading the viewer's eye directly to the sitter's haunting gaze. By this time, Giacometti felt he had exhausted the possibilities inherent in his stick-like, ghostly figures of the late 1940s, and he aimed to reclaim a more concrete sense of space. Barely visible under the tangled interplay of lines is a large 'X, 'crossing just atop the center of the figure's brow, and again at the center of the figure's throat. Throughout Giacometti's drawing oeuvre, the artist's fascination with representing visual perception is evident; here, these lines document Giacometti's attempt to situating the sitter's presence in space. His lines, fast moving, intensely layered in some areas while sparse in others, capture the ever-changing spirit of a human being's presence – a materialization of Giacometti's experience of perception. Like his mentor Paul Cézanne, Giacometti returned to the same motif time and again, relentlessly attempting to perceive visible nature and preserving the feeling of what is seen. Giacometti replicates his pencil in the same repetitive movement around the eyes. The outline around the eyes dissolve into a zone that no longer outlines, but rather energizes their center. Jacques Dupin described these drawings as his 'focus' compositions: "The line is not so much a definition of forms as it is a challenge to them to appear, revealing themselves in the curve. Their frequency and emphasis are heightened as they near the focus" (Jacques Dupin quoted in B. Lamarcho – Vadel, Alberto Giacometti, Paris, 1984, p. 94).
Giacometti aimed to depict people as visual phenomena, stating that "Heads, figures are nothing but the perpetual movement of their inside, of their outside, they re-make themselves with no pause, they are not a real consistence... they are a moving mass" (Alberto Giacometti quoted in A. de la Beaumelle (ed.), Alberto Giacometti: Le dessin l'oeuvre, exh. cat., Paris, 2001, p. 190). After World War II, Giacometti almost entirely devoted his sculpture to the singular, skeleton-like figure which was an eerie reminder of alienation and loneliness in the aftermath of postwar Europe. His drawings, on the other hand, allowed the artist to move forward – acting as a neutral backdrop for his imagination. While it can be presumed that the present drawing is likely of Diego, the artist's brother who dominated the artist's creative output, Alberto did begin drawing his friends and associates during this time – including the composer Igor Stravinsky, Giacometti's biographer James Lord, and the poet Pierre Reverdy. In these portraits, almost all the sitters face frontally. They are depicted through rapidly applied lines which repeatedly encircle the outward region of the face, while narrower lines that divide the sitter's features. In the present work, the sitter's eyes are reinforced by large and heavily drawn circles. Yves Bonnefoy has explained the significance of the figure's head: "It is already surprising enough to find an artist at the height of his powers, who in the space of three or four years had sculpted some of the major archetypes of modern art and was immediately recognized as such, practically abandoning this type of creation in order to devote himself to the portraits of a few individuals...During this final period, of almost fifteen years, the heads studies were exclusively Diego, Annette, Annetta [the artist's mother], Caroline and a very few other persons, all close friends, which proves that Giacometti had indeed chosen the existence of individuals, the here and now as the chief object of his new and future study; and he instinctively realized that this object transcended all artistic signs and representations, since it was no less than life itself" (Alberto Giacometti: A Biography of His Work, Paris, 2012, p. 369).
In May 1985, the artist's biographer James Lord wrote: "Giacometti said that it was by means of style that works of art attain truth, and he added that, while art is interesting, truth alone is of enduring consequence. By main force and long-drawn-out labor he forged a style instantly recognizable as his, and his alone, owing nothing to anyone, and through it he attained his own truth, now bequeath to us all as part of our living heritage" (James Lord quoted in Sidney Janis Gallery, Alberto Giacometti, exh. cat., New York, 1985, n.p.). Tête is a glimmered view of the artist's engagement to an intimate relationship with his subject, a way for Giacometti to emphasize the intensity of the sitter's gaze and symbolize man's existence in a post-war era.
View it on
Estimate
Time, Location
Auction House
Tête
Tête
signed 'A Giacometti' (lower right)
colored pencil and pencil on paper
5 9/16 x 4 3/16 in (14.2 x 10.6 cm)
Executed circa 1950
The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by the Comité Giacometti. It is recorded in the online Alberto Giacometti Database as AGD 4236.
Provenance
B. C. Holland Gallery, Chicago, no. C84-9-4 (by 1994).
Private collection.
Acquired by the present owner in 2020.
"A blind man is feeling his way in the night"
- The first line of a poem Alberto Giacometti wrote when asked to write about himself, quoted in D. Sylvester, Looking at Giacometti, New York, 1994, p. 110.
Rendered with frenzied, swirling lines of red, blue, black and yellow, the present lot emphasizes an important technique of Alberto Giacometti's late period. Giacometti mastered all media – sculpture, drawing, and painting – but his exploration of the human figure is most obvious in his drawings, which exude the same feverish energy as his sculptures. Tête reveals the artist's confident handling of the pencil, and his expressive ability as draftsman to reveal his hand and process. Despite his mastery of multiple media, Giacometti declared that "One has to focus uniquely and exclusively on drawing. If one could master drawing, everything else could be possible" (Alberto Giacometti quoted in J. Lord, Dessins de Giacometti, Paris, 1971, p. 26). Intensely introspective, Tête is a revelation of Giacometti's exploratory genius as a draftsman.
Executed circa 1950, Tête shows an elongated head and neck floating atop a tangled network of sprawling lines against a vast expanse of paper. Detached from its corporeal support, Giacometti's delicate, yet incisive use of line not only gives vigorous definition to the figure's features, but also forcefully builds the perspectival focus, leading the viewer's eye directly to the sitter's haunting gaze. By this time, Giacometti felt he had exhausted the possibilities inherent in his stick-like, ghostly figures of the late 1940s, and he aimed to reclaim a more concrete sense of space. Barely visible under the tangled interplay of lines is a large 'X, 'crossing just atop the center of the figure's brow, and again at the center of the figure's throat. Throughout Giacometti's drawing oeuvre, the artist's fascination with representing visual perception is evident; here, these lines document Giacometti's attempt to situating the sitter's presence in space. His lines, fast moving, intensely layered in some areas while sparse in others, capture the ever-changing spirit of a human being's presence – a materialization of Giacometti's experience of perception. Like his mentor Paul Cézanne, Giacometti returned to the same motif time and again, relentlessly attempting to perceive visible nature and preserving the feeling of what is seen. Giacometti replicates his pencil in the same repetitive movement around the eyes. The outline around the eyes dissolve into a zone that no longer outlines, but rather energizes their center. Jacques Dupin described these drawings as his 'focus' compositions: "The line is not so much a definition of forms as it is a challenge to them to appear, revealing themselves in the curve. Their frequency and emphasis are heightened as they near the focus" (Jacques Dupin quoted in B. Lamarcho – Vadel, Alberto Giacometti, Paris, 1984, p. 94).
Giacometti aimed to depict people as visual phenomena, stating that "Heads, figures are nothing but the perpetual movement of their inside, of their outside, they re-make themselves with no pause, they are not a real consistence... they are a moving mass" (Alberto Giacometti quoted in A. de la Beaumelle (ed.), Alberto Giacometti: Le dessin l'oeuvre, exh. cat., Paris, 2001, p. 190). After World War II, Giacometti almost entirely devoted his sculpture to the singular, skeleton-like figure which was an eerie reminder of alienation and loneliness in the aftermath of postwar Europe. His drawings, on the other hand, allowed the artist to move forward – acting as a neutral backdrop for his imagination. While it can be presumed that the present drawing is likely of Diego, the artist's brother who dominated the artist's creative output, Alberto did begin drawing his friends and associates during this time – including the composer Igor Stravinsky, Giacometti's biographer James Lord, and the poet Pierre Reverdy. In these portraits, almost all the sitters face frontally. They are depicted through rapidly applied lines which repeatedly encircle the outward region of the face, while narrower lines that divide the sitter's features. In the present work, the sitter's eyes are reinforced by large and heavily drawn circles. Yves Bonnefoy has explained the significance of the figure's head: "It is already surprising enough to find an artist at the height of his powers, who in the space of three or four years had sculpted some of the major archetypes of modern art and was immediately recognized as such, practically abandoning this type of creation in order to devote himself to the portraits of a few individuals...During this final period, of almost fifteen years, the heads studies were exclusively Diego, Annette, Annetta [the artist's mother], Caroline and a very few other persons, all close friends, which proves that Giacometti had indeed chosen the existence of individuals, the here and now as the chief object of his new and future study; and he instinctively realized that this object transcended all artistic signs and representations, since it was no less than life itself" (Alberto Giacometti: A Biography of His Work, Paris, 2012, p. 369).
In May 1985, the artist's biographer James Lord wrote: "Giacometti said that it was by means of style that works of art attain truth, and he added that, while art is interesting, truth alone is of enduring consequence. By main force and long-drawn-out labor he forged a style instantly recognizable as his, and his alone, owing nothing to anyone, and through it he attained his own truth, now bequeath to us all as part of our living heritage" (James Lord quoted in Sidney Janis Gallery, Alberto Giacometti, exh. cat., New York, 1985, n.p.). Tête is a glimmered view of the artist's engagement to an intimate relationship with his subject, a way for Giacometti to emphasize the intensity of the sitter's gaze and symbolize man's existence in a post-war era.
Estimate
Time, Location
Auction House
