Alberto Giacometti

This lot is offered together with a certificate of authenticity from the Comité Giacometti and is recorded in the Alberto Giacometti database.

The present lot is an exceptional example of one of Giacometti’s most iconic design creations, and stands as one of the great achievements of his collaboration with Jean-Miche Frank. Somewhere between figuration and abstraction, the treatment of the surfaces of the design recall some of the most successful and compelling Surrealist compositions. The bust of a woman constitutes the focal point of the work and interrupts the otherwise abstract construction of the elongated form.  

Alberto Giacometti’s training as a sculptor and artist is evident in the work that he produced for Jean-Michel Frank. Son of an impressionist painter, Giacometti revealed a precocious artistic talent, and throughout his career, he drew on the influence of cubism, surrealism, and ancient European and African art. Giacometti's involvement with the decorative arts started in the 1930s at the beginning of his repute, when he started to collaborate with the internationally acclaimed decorator Jean-Michel Frank. For him, he designed beautiful pieces of furniture for the decorator’s signature interiors, characterized by extreme simplicity of forms and limited colors. Giacometti's original designs were sought after by the Parisian elite, and together with Frank, they decorated the most prestigious apartments.

When Giacometti began creating decorative arts for Jean-Michel Frank, it was first for economic necessity. The decorator was fond of the intense but simple shapes imagined by Giacometti when he sculpted Reclining Woman. More than a working relationship, both forged a strong friendship that ended with Jean-Michel Frank's death. For Frank’s work, Giacometti designed his most emblematic decorative arts. Indeed, his “utilitarian objects,” as he would define them, stretched the boundaries of both design and sculpture and exemplified the essence of Giacometti's style, an exciting mix of Surrealism influence and admiration for elongated human forms. Important patrons such as Nelson Rockefeller and the fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli commissioned the iconic duo to decorate their homes.