Taking Shape

A ppearing at auction for the first time, Quatre figurines sur piédestal (Figurines de Londres, version A), Quatre figurines and Rue de l’Échaudé (Quatre figurines sur sur piédestal) are variations on the iconic motif of four female figures, worked and re-worked by Giacometti over the course of 15 years to reach a state of sculptural resolution in a masterpiece cast in bronze in 1965. Individually, these works are testaments to Giacometti’s radical rendering of the human form and ability to imbue a sense of tension in his figures. Together, they document an extraordinary narrative of the creative process of an artist at the height of his career and a ceaselessly imaginative mind in constant action.

Upon his joyous return to Paris after wartime exile in Switzerland, Giacometti resumed his routine of frequenting the myriad establishments of Parisian nightlife. In 1946, during a visit to The Sphinx, the city’s most upscale maison close, Giacometti caught a glimpse of four women, standing together in their place of work, separated from him by a seemingly unbridgeable space yet tantalizingly close in spirit. The artist described his vision as, “several nude women seen at the Sphinx while I was seated at the end of the room. The distance that separated us (the polished floor), which seemed impassable despite my desire to cross it, impressed me as much as the women did” (quoted in Alberto Giacometti (exhibition catalogue), The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles & San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco, 1965-66, p. 60).

This experience at The Sphinx left a lasting impression on Giacometti. Initial conceptions of the four-figured motif appeared in the form of a rough sketch in a letter that the artist wrote to Pierre Matisse in 1948 (see fig. 1), followed by drawings of similar forms on the wall of his studio in 1949 (see fig. 2). By 1950, Giacometti had rendered the figures three-dimensionally, painting facial features onto four figures sculpted in plaster rising from a flat plaster base (see fig. 3). While this plaster model stood on its own as a finished work, Giacometti went on to cast the form in bronze later that year. Throughout the next decade, Giacometti preoccupied himself with reworking the subject of the four standing women (see fig. 4). Executed in 1952, Rue de l’Échaudé (Quatre figurines sur sur piédestal) from the present collection is a dynamic example of Giacometti’s reconsideration of this motif on paper. By 1965, the four-figured motif had undergone further evolution, so that when it appeared at the Tate that year as part of the artist’s retrospective, the four female figures were dwarfed by the large trapezoidal bronze base and the four-legged pedestal on which it was perched. Unsatisfied by the figures themselves, Giacometti created a new plaster version and placed it on top of the bronze pedestal for the duration of the exhibition.

In Giacometti’s 1952 drawing Rue de l’Échaudé (Quatre figurines sur sur piédestal), the four figures are enclosed by a border that evokes La Cage, another of Giacometti’s masterpieces from this period. Similar to the theme of the four standing women, Giacometti conceived, cast and then re-worked La Cage until he reached a point of sculptural resolution (see figs. 5 & 6). Patrick Elliott has linked the couple inLa Cage (première version) and their indistinct interaction to that of a prostitute and her client, perhaps, as in the Quatre figurines series, modeled on Giacometti’s own experiences at The Sphinx as well (P. Elliott, Alberto Giacometti 1901-1966 (exhibition catalogue), Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, 1996, p. 165). In the second version of La Cage, Giacometti raised the bronze enclosure onto a pedestal, similar to the 1965 version of Quatre figurines sur piédestal (Figurines de Londres, version A). The elevation of the main sculpture composition in Quatre figurines and La Cage onto tall pedestals also demonstrate Giacometti’s interest in positioning figures precisely in a clearly defined space. In no work is this practice more prominent in Chariot, in which a thin elongated figure is perched on a small flat platform secured to the axel of a chariot, which in turn, sits on top of two wooden blocks. Chariot in its most finished form was conceived in the same year as the plaster version of Quatre figurines, though conceptions of the standing figure in the composition were modeled in plaster as early as 1942 (see figs. 7 & 8). All three of these masterpieces—Quatre figurines, La Cage and Chariot—serve not only as iconic manifestations of Giacometti’s post-war Existentialism but as documentations of his creative mind at work.

Past Auction

Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale

12 November 2019 | 7:00 PM EST | New York