Giacomo Manzù

Tokyo, Contemporary Sculpture Center, Giacomo Manzù, 1986, no. 9, illustrated in the catalogue

Cesare Brandi & Giulio Carlo Argan, Giacomo Manzù, Florence, 1986, pl. 54, illustration of another example p. 129
Paolo Portoghesi & Fiorella Minervino, Manzù, Milan, 1988, no. 147, illustration of another example p. 178
Carlo Pirovano, Scultura Italiana del Novecento, Milan, 1993, no. 294, illustration of another example p. 221

Tebe che cade ('Tebe Falling') is a magnificent composition exploring a graceful balancing act of the female figure on the rear leg of a chair. In the 1980s, Manzù's work was dominated by the character of Tebe, and the present work is one of the most dynamic representations of this subject. The lively, playful quality of Tebe che cade is juxtaposed with a sense of tension, resulting from the pose of the large, voluminous body of the girl, caught at the most dramatic moment of her inevitable fall. It is this sense of the loss of stability and broken equilibrium that gives the present work a sense of energy and dramatic force.

Livia Velani wrote on this subject: 'For Manzù, an old straw-seated chair from Chiavari constitutes a symbol, almost trademark. His only possession from the family home at Bergamo, the chair appeared in his very first drawing in which the artist began to study the seated female figure. The Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna  in Rome owns an embossed copper relief, from 1933, that was Manzù's first attempt to realize, life-size, the figure of a seated young woman. At the Venice Biennale of 1948 the first bronze casting of the Girl on the Chair was shown along other works. He later perfected this in another version in 1949 and in 1955 in other versions. The subject in time evolves into the representation of his daughter Giulia as a child seated on a fantasy high chair, as in Giulia on the Chair, 1966, and during these last years with Tebe Seated, 1983, Tebe in Costume, 1985 [and the present work, Tebe Falling, 1985]' (Livia Velani, Manzù, Milan, 1987, p. 56).

Another variant of this work is now in the collection of the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.