Alberto Giacometti

Galerie Maeght, Paris

Harriet Weiner Goodstein, New York (acquired from the above in 1960)

Sotheby’s, New York, 11 May 1994, lot 53 (consigned by the above)

Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

Exh. Cat., London, Hanover Gallery, Giacometti, Marini, Matisse, Moore, 1958, no. 7, illustration of another cast

Jacques Dupin, Alberto Giacometti, Paris, 1962, p. 279, illustration of the plaster in its original state (titled Tête and dated 1957)

Exh. Cat., Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, Verzameling Ella Winter, 1961-62, n.p., illustration of another cast

Exh. Cat., London, Tate Gallery, Alberto Giacometti. Sculpture Paintings Drawings 1913-1965, 1965, no. 68 (titled Head and Shoulders and dated 1957)

David Sylvester, Looking at Giacometti, London, 1994, pp. 77-79, illustration of the plaster in a later state (in a 1966 photograph of the artist's studio)

Ernst Scheidegger, Alberto Giacometti–Sculpture in Plaster, Zurich and Frankfurt, 2006, p. 84, illustration of the plaster in its original state; p. 112

Exh. Cat., Paris, Centre Pompidou, The Studio of Alberto Giacometti, 2007-08, no. 215, p. 406, illustration of the plaster in a later state

Kunsthaus Zürich, Alberto Giacometti – Au-delà des bronzes, 2016-17, fig. 119, p. 151, illustration in color of the plaster in a later state

London, Tate Modern, Giacometti, 2017, p. 256, illustration in color of the plaster in a later state; p. 295

Musée National des Beaux Arts du Québec, Alberto Giacometti, 2018, n.p., illustration in color of the plaster in a later state

Exh. Cat., Grimaldi Forum Monaco, Alberto Giacometti, a retrospective. Marvelous reality, 2021, pp. 88-89, illustrations in color of the plaster in a later state

Exh. Cat., Paris, Institut Giacometti, Alberto Giacometti / Ali Cherri: Envisagement, 2024, p. 72, illustration in color of the plaster in a later state; p. 105, illustration of the plaster in a later state (in photograph of the work in storage)

Conceived in plaster circa 1956 and cast in bronze between 1957 and 1959, the present strikingly expressive bust depicts one of Giacometti’s most important and celebrated models, his brother Diego. Diego had served as the model for Giacometti’s very first sculpture back in 1914, and throughout the artist’s life remained one of his most frequent sitters. From 1929 onwards, he also worked as Giacometti’s trusted studio assistant, overseeing essential technical aspects of his work including armature building, casting and patination. In 1964 Giacometti famously remarked in a conversation with his biographer James Lord that Diego was “[…] the one I know best. He’s posed for me over a longer time and more often than anyone else” (Giacometti quoted in Exh. Cat., London, Tate Modern, Giacometti, 2017, p. 37).

Of all the artist’s representations of the human figure, it is arguably the busts of Diego that rank among his most intimate and also his most formally radical and visually engaging sculptures. Working relentlessly in plaster and clay, Giacometti recreated his brother’s likeness over and over, with results ranging from strikingly realistic to those that were increasingly abstracted and conveyed the sensation of his brother rather than his exact appearance.

It is also in the busts of Diego executed in the 1950s, that Giacometti’s sustained engagement with the question of representing human nature in three-dimensional form manifests itself perhaps most ardently. Through his persistent return to the same model, Giacometti foregrounded his quest into the nature and limits of artistic representation. In a critical statement from 1957, the artist highlighted the importance of returning to a familiar subject. For him, the successive renderings of the same sitter were by no means in contradiction with one another; nor were they merely exercises in trial and refinement. Rather, they were all correlative expressions of a broader phenomenological investigation:

“No sculpture ever dethrones another. A sculpture is not an object, it is an interrogation, a question, an answer. It can never be finished nor perfect – the question doesn't even arise. Everything recommenced for Michelangelo with the Rondanini Pieta, his last sculpture. And Michelangelo could have continued sculpting Pietas for a thousand years without repeating himself, without returning to the past, without ever finishing anything, always going further. Rodin, too. A broken machine or automobile becomes scrap metal, whereas a Chaldean sculpture broken in four pieces yields four sculptures, and each part is worth the whole, and the whole and the parts always remain virulent and topical."

-Alberto Giacometti (quoted in Exh. Cat., Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, The Studio of Alberto Giacometti, 2007, p. 79).

Busts of Diego likewise vividly reveal the inherently elusive—and what at times must have felt somewhat Sisyphean—nature of Giacometti’s artistic pursuit. In relation to his brother, he famously stated that “When he’s sitting there, I don’t recognize him” (Giacometti quoted in Exh. Cat., Salzburg, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg and Museum der Moderne Mönchsberg, Alberto Giacometti, The Origin of Space, 2010, p. 140). This connects to another key statement of his: “Distance between myself and the model tends to increase continually; the closer I get, the further away it moves.”

As Paul Moorhouse noted in this regard, “In Giacometti’s images of people, there is a profound sense of the artist’s involvement with his own subjective responses, his compulsion to test the processes of perception, in order to understand his relationship both with the external world and with its most vital manifestation: another living being. […] To an extreme degree, Giacometti’s art lays bare the complexities and ambiguities of perception, relentlessly exposing the fugitive and elusive nature of visual experience. His portraits are in that sense not simply depictions of individuals. Rather, they are sites that bear the evidence of the artist’s struggle to comprehend and express an unfathomable human presence” (Exh. Cat., London, National Portrait Gallery, Giacometti. Pure Presence, 2015, pp. 15-16).

Perhaps more so than other busts of Diego from this pivotal period, the present work is notable for the wondrous duality it reveals upon close inspection. When viewed en face, Diego’s features —notably, his prominent forehead and his large, expressive eyes—are immediately recognizable. Yet, while viewed in profile, the bust’s features bear strong resemblance to those of Alberto himself, particularly the nose and the shape of the head. This initially disorientating effect speaks to the proximity between the two brothers, the sculptural depiction of Diego in this instance acting as an exploration into the artist’s own inner world, through an incessant study of a person who knew Giacometti his whole life and was an integral part of his most formative memories.

As Yves Bonnefoy remarked, “In the presence of someone who is, as it were, his double, Giacometti more than ever is witness to the mystery of existence, like Hamlet thinking of Yorick, in front of a skull in the dust” (Yves Bonnefoy, Giacometti. A Biography of His Work, Paris, 1991, p. 432). The poet went on to comment: “Diego […] lived at the very heart of the work in progress, and Alberto to some extent could consider him another self” (ibid., p. 441).

Stylistically, Buste de Diego embodies the transition in Giacometti’s style following the end of the Second World War, with his post-war oeuvre defined by the increasingly more systematic and prolific output featuring themes that characterized his mature work. The sculptures from the 1950s have a previously unseen degree of intimate realism, yet this realism is frequently—as is the case with the present work—countered and intensified by the distinctly expressive modelling of the works. A further contrast is revealed in the delicate modelling of Diego’s head vis-à-vis the more liberal, vigorous way in which his torso is executed, resulting in a remarkable degree of expressivity. Likewise, the excessively slim rendering of the head and neck stands in stark juxtaposition with the wider, wing-like shape of the sitter’s shoulders and torso.

Numbered 4/6, the present work was cast between 1957 and 1959 and exhibits the rich and nuanced patina so characteristic of the artist's lifetime casts. The present bronze is notable for the circular expanse under the figure's proper right arm, under which the bronze connects the torso and inner arm. This detail aligns with the original state of the plaster (see fig. 4). Sometime after 1962, the plaster was damaged, resulting in the loss of the connective area between the right inner arm and torso (see fig. 5). Later bronze casts within the edition, those made after the damage to the plaster, present a slightly different form in this area beneath the arm. As is not uncommon for the artist, the edition of Buste de Diego also consists of another 4/6 cast with a darker patina, sold at Sotheby’s London in 2018.

Not long after the execution of the present work, execution, Buste de Diego was acquired via Galerie Maeght by a New York collector Harriet Weiner Goodstein. Having remained with her for over thirty years, it was sold at Sotheby’s in 1994, where it was acquired by Geri Brawerman, in whose collection it has remained until now.