Alberto Giacometti

Carlo Huber, Alberto Giacometti, Zürich, 1970, no. 22, illustration of another cast
Alberto Giacometti (exhibition catalogue), Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, 1978, no. 79, illustration of another cast
Alberto Giacometti: Ein Klassiker der Moderne 1901-1966 (exhibition catalogue), Bünder Kunstmuseum, Char, 1978, no. 134, illustration of another cast
Giacometti (exhibition catalogue), Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, 1979, no. 12, illustration of another cast
Exhibition of Sculpture, Painting and Drawing by Alberto Giacometti (exhibition catalogue), Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, 1985, no. 42, illustration of another cast
William McCarter and Rita Gilbert, Living with Art, New York, 1985, fig. 346, illustration of another cast p. 269
A Century of Modern Sculpture.  The Patsy and Raymond Nasher Collection (exhibition catalogue), Museum of Art, Dallas, 1987, no. 32, illustration of another cast p. 158
Yves Bonnefoy, Alberto Giacometti, A Biography of His Work, Paris, 1991, no. 424, illustration of another cast p. 442 
Alberto Giacometti (exhibition catalogue), Kunsthaus, Zürich; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2001-02, no. 142, illustration of another cast p. 204

Diego au chandail is one of Alberto Giacometti’s first sculptural portraits of his younger brother, who was the artist’s primary model throughout the 1950s and 1960s (see fig. 1).  These portraits of Diego indicate the close relationship that the two men shared, and Alberto’s familiarity with his subject undoubtedly aided in the artistic freedom with which he could approach his work.  The Giacometti brothers collaborated for much of their professional lives, and their reliance upon each other’s creative support is well known.  As was the case for most of his sculptures, Alberto conceived the model in clay on the armature and Diego assisted with the bronze casting.  By the time he created this work, Alberto already had attracted significant critical recognition and had secured a contract with the Galerie Maeght in Paris.  Diego, on the other hand, had only just begun to design the bronze furniture that would make him famous in his own right.   Although Alberto always encouraged his brother to develop his artistic talent, he also recognized that Diego was indispensable to the production of his innovative sculptures. The brothers’ relationship was shaped by a mutual loyalty and respect that ultimately helped each man make the most of his talent.   Annette Arm accounted for this when discussing her husband Alberto in 1952: “He remains always his same anxious self, but fortunately, he has a brother who is more calm and understands him well” (quoted in James Lord, Giacometti, A Biography, New York, 1983, p. 329).

The present work, conceived in 1954, depicts Diego wearing a sweater.   The figure’s torso is modeled in the shape of a pyramid, a geometric conceit given further emphasis by the organic appearance of the fully worked surface.  The head ascends from the body as the top of the sculpture condenses and lengthens, creating a dramatic visual impact.  The fact that the artist so freely manipulated the figure of his brother shows his own level of confidence when approaching this subject.  After a lifetime of familiarity with Diego's countenance Giacometti is able to capture the subtleties of each facial feature, like the bulbous nose and the prominent brow. As abstract as this form may appear, it is an unmistakable likeness of a man with whom the artist had shared some of the most intimate moments of his life.

These likenesses of Diego marked a major shift in Giacometti’s approach to his sculpture.  In contrast to the elongated figures of his post-war years, these figural sculptures from the 1950s were more naturalistic in scale and more emphatically focused on the nuances of the sitter’s face.  Most of these works were heads and half-length busts, completed between 1951 and 1957 and often conceived from memory.  Many of these sculptures were executed with the matière pétre, or kneaded method, that heightened the expressiveness of the figure. As with the present work, Giacometti enhances the realism of these faces by precisely incising the features with a knife.  But his restless hands, constantly pinching, smoothing and remodeling the surface, are his primary tools (see fig. 2).

In his monograph on Giacometti, Yves Bonnefoy has discussed these sculptural portraits of the 1950s: “These sculpted faces compel one to face them as if one were speaking to the person, meeting his eyes and thereby understanding better the compression, the narrowing that Giacometti imposed on the chin or the nose or the general shape of the skull.  This was the period when Giacometti was most strongly conscious of the fact that the inside of the plaster or clay mass which he modeled was something inert, undifferentiated, nocturnal, that it betrays life he sought to represent, and that he must therefore strive to eliminate this purely spatial dimension by constricting the material to fit the most prominent characteristics of the face.  This is exactly what he achieves with amazing vigor, when occasionally, he gave Diego’s face a blade-like narrowness – drawing seems to have eliminated the plaster, the head has escaped from space – and demand therefore that the spectator stand in front of the sculpture as he did himself, disregarding the back and sides of his model and as bound to a face-to-face relationship as in the case of work at an easel.  As Giacometti once said, 'There is no difference between painting and sculpture.'  Since 1945, he added, 'I have been practicing them both indifferently, each helping me to do the other.  In fact, both of them are drawings, and drawing has helped me to see' " (Yves Bonnefoy, Alberto Giacometti, A Biography of His Work, Paris, 1991, pp. 432-36).

Fig. 1, Diego and Alberto Giacometti, circa 1960. Photograph Ernst Scheidegger

Fig. 2, Giacometti sculpting a bust of his brother in his studio in Paris, 1960.  Photograph René Burri