Alberto Giacometti

Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York
Heinz Berggruen, Paris
Private Collection, Los Angeles (acquired in 1965)
Galerie Cazeau-Béraudière, Paris
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Modulated rich brown patina. Apart from some minor wear to the patina consistent with age, this work is in excellent original condition.
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Femme debout (Annette) is an elegant example one of the most important motifs of Giacometti's art - the standing female figure. Throughout the 1940s and up until his death in 1966, Giacometti created several variations of a lone nude woman, her long, lean body anchored with heavy block feet to a base and frozen in time. His many sculptural versions of this motif, most notably his series known as Femmes de Venise (fig. 1), highlight the dramatic contours of the body and the power of a single gesture. Giacometti's standing women drew their inspriration from a variety of classical and 'primitive' sources; most notably hieratic Egyptian statuary (fig. 2), which emanated an enigmatic power similar to that with which he  wished to imbue his own work.

The scale of his sculptures was an important component in Giacometti's creative vision and something that he discussed frequently with his companions. Sculptures that were too big, or life size, 'infuriated' him because they relied too much on imagination rather than on existential experience. On the other hand, he found works that were too small to be 'intolerable' because they were difficult to handle and materially unsustainable.  The present work was an ideal form for him to manipulate. He could walk around it while simultaneously twisting and pinching it at all points and angles. Working on this scale he liberated his figure from the mimicry of reality, eliminating the need for viewers to imagine the work in proportional relation to themselves. By doing so, his figure became purely a concrete object in a clearly defined space. 

Dieter Honisch explains the complexities Giacometti faced with sculptures of this stature: 'The pictorial distance of Giacometti's figure, which rendered them thin and small, automatically raised the question of how they were to be granted the tactile proximity that is essential to sculpture. Giacometti solved this problem in a two-fold way. Firstly, he gave his figures a large base or pedestal.  Secondly, as his friends report, he generated a sense of proximity by incessantly fingering the clay models, hence giving the impression of surfaces seen from close up. As a result, no one figure ever looked similar to another, because the final state emerged only from a continuous series of innumerable sculptural actions' (D. Honisch, 'Scale in Giacometti's Sculpture', in Alberto Giacometti, Sculpture, Paintings, Drawings, Munich & New York, 1994, p. 68).

Conceived circa 1956, at the height of Giacometti's international acclaim, the present sculpture is related to the remarkable series of Giacometti's Femmes de Venise, which made their debut at the Venice Biennale the following year. After his success at the Biennale, Giacometti continued to develop the theme of standing female figures, elongating and accentuating the feminine body and challenging the limits of the malleability and manipulation of his bronze figures. His exploration of this theme culminated in 1960 with his Grandes femmes, which were intended as part of a project for Chase Manhattan Plaza in New York City, followed by Femme debout of 1961, which was to be one of his final works on this subject.



Fig. 1, Alberto Giacometti, Femme de Venise I, 1956, bronze, Fondation Marguerite et Aimé Maeght, St. Paul de Vence

Fig. 2, Standing Figure of a Gift-Bearer, Ancient Theban/Egyptian, painted wood, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, Berlin

Fig. 3, Giacometti in his studio, 1957. Photograph by Robert Doisneau