Alberto Giacometti

Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York (acquired from the artist)

Acquired from the above in October 1951

New York, Pierre Matisse Gallery, Alberto Giacometti, 1950, no. 50

Chicago, Arts Club of Chicago, Sculpture and Paintings by Alberto Giacometti, 1953

London, Tate Gallery, Alberto Giacometti, 1965, no. 41, illustrated in the catalogue

Berlin, Nationalgalerie & Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie, Alberto Giacometti: Skulpturen, Gemälde, Zeichnungen, Graphik, 1987, no. 129, illustrated in color in the catalogue

Excellent condition. Original canvas and good surface texture and colors are strong and vibrant. There are very light rubbing to the four corners possibly due to former framing.
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“We may imagine that Realism consists of copying… a vase just as it appears on the table. In fact, one only ever copies the vision that remains of it at each instant, the image that becomes conscious… You never copy the glass on the table; you copy the residue of it.”
Alberto Giacometti

Giacometti's depictions of his studio capture the frenetic artistry that defined his creative process. Between 1950 and 1954 he completed several canvases, drawings and lithographs that depicted the jumble of plaster sculptures, empty bottles, armatures, stretcher bars and wooden stools that crowded his work-space. The ashen and tobacco-stained palette of the artist's paintings of this subject, including the present work, evoke the plaster dust that covered nearly every surface and the cigarette butts that he discarded all over the floor. Alexander Liberman, who visited Giacometti's studio in the early 1950s, described the scene: "Under a big window is a long table entirely covered with squeezed tubes of paint, palettes, paintbrushes, rags and bottles of turpentine. Like figures, the bottles stand shrouded in layers of dust chipped away from Giacometti's sculpture. Here sculpture and painting mix intimately" (A. Liberman, The Artist and His Studio, New York, 1960, pp. 277-78).

Giacometti once quipped that only Francis Bacon had a messier studio than he did, perhaps indicative of a certain pride that he may have taken in his own permissive disorderliness. Yet, there are obvious elements of staging in these compositions that remind us of the artist's overall control of his environment. We can see this in the present work, where a few strategically placed ripe-red apples appear almost enshrined on a stool at the center of the composition. The tension between order and disorder is at the heart of these compositions, and Giacometti's painting captures the beauty created by these forces in opposition.