Alberto Giacometti

Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York

Acquired from the above by the present owner in the early 1980s

Alberto Giacometti: Zeichnungen, Gemälde, Skulpturen (exhibition catalogue), Galerie Beyeler, Basel, 1963, no. 50, another cast listed (titled Etude d'après nature)

Reinhold Hohl, Alberto Giacometti, New York, 1971, illustration of another cast p. 197 (titled Femme nue)

Alberto Giacometti, A Retrospective Exhibition (exhibition catalogue), The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1974, no. 72, illustration of another cast (titled Etude d'après nature)

La Mamma a Stampa: Annette gesehen von Giovanni und Alberto Giacometti (exhibition catalogue), Zürich, 1990, no. 59, another cast listed

Yves Bonnefoy, Alberto Giacometti, Biographie d'une oeuvre, Paris, 1991, no. 359, illustration of another cast p. 384 (titled Nu debout sans bras)

Alberto Giacometti, The Artist's Studio (exhibition catalogue), The Tate Gallery, Liverpool, 1991, photograph of the artist in his studio with a cast of the present work illustrated on the frontispiece

Alberto Giacometti (exhibition catalogue), The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Kunsthaus, Zürich, 2001-02, no. 157, illustration of another cast p. 219 (titled Nu debout sans bras)

Excellent condition. There is some typical rubbing to the patina on figure's head and around the edges of the top of the base.
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Nu debout sans bras, also known as Étude d'après nature, is a richly-modeled rendition of the most important motif in Giacometti's career - 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. In its many sculptural incarnations, this image highlights the dramatic contours of the body and the power of a single gesture.  With its multiple and conflicting thematic connotations of stoicism, resilience, passivity, strength and vulnerability, it embodies the Existentialist concerns of many artists and intellectuals working in Paris during the Cold War.   The present sculpture, created at the height of Giacometti's international popularity in the mid-1950s, is a quintessential image in the artist's oeuvre that underscores the permanence of Giacometti's place as one of the true masters of 20^th century art. 

Standing at a little under two feet tall, this sculpture can be considered a precursor to Giacometti's Femmes de Venise, which would debut at the Venice Biennale in 1956.  Following his success at the Biennale, Giacometti continued to develop the theme of standing female figures, elongating and accentuating the feminine curvature of the 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.

Fig. 1, Giacometti in his studio.  A cast of the present sculpture can be seen in the background.