Alberto Giacometti

Annette Giacometti (and sold: Christie's, Paris, September 28, 2002, lot 8)
Private Collection (acquired at the above sale)
Acquired from the above in 2009

Alberto Giacometti: A Loan Exhibition (exhibition catalogue), Acquavella Galleries, New York, 1994, illustration of another cast p. 60

Blackish brown patina. A few scattered tiny spots of patina rubbing, otherwise fine. This work is in excellent condition.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Buste d'homme sur socle, a powerfully attenuated and richly textured bust, is a reflection of the duality in Giacometti's oeuvre during the late 1940s and early 1950s. On the one hand, there is the increasing emphasis on the reduction of the human figure, which was honed down to an essence to correspond to the artist's vision of reality; on the other, there is the creation of surfaces that inflect and manipulate the play of light upon them.

A visit to the cinema during this period had changed the way Giacometti viewed the world and his art. He commented: "I began to see heads in the void, in the space which surrounds them. When for the first time I clearly perceived how a head I was looking at could become fixed, immobilized definitively in time, I trembled with terror as never before in my life and a cold sweat ran down my back. It was no longer a living head, but an object I was looking at like any other object, but no, differently, not like any other object but like something simultaneously living and dead. I gave a cry of terror as if I had just crossed a threshold, as if I was entering a world never seen before" (quoted in James Lord, Giacometti, A Biography, London, 1986, p. 258).