Alberto Giacometti

Private Collection, Paris
Sale: Sotheby's, London, April 4, 1990, lot 361
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

London, Thomas Gibson Fine Art, Alberto Giacometti, 1989, no. 18, illustrated in the catalogue

Work is in very good condition. Varied green and brown patina. Scattered oxidation and some minor patina rubbing at upper edges of base, otherwise fine.
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.

Giacometti met Simone de Beauvoir in the early 1940s through her companion Jean-Paul Sartre. De Beauvoir and Sartre regarded Giacometti as, "a fascinating conversational partner and as an artist who was engaged in a 'search for the absolute',...someone who was, as it were, re-inventing the art of sculpture" (Angela Schneider, ed., Alberto Giacometti, Sculpture, Paintings, Drawings, New York, 1994, p. 23). Through their conversations (many of which were recorded by de Beauvoir during long nights in the cafés of Montparnasse and Saint-Germain-des-Prés, weathering the German occupation of Paris), Giacometti synthesized sculptural concepts focusing on form as well as the surrounding "void".

The evidence of de Beauvoir's Existentialist influence appeared quickly in Giacometti's work. By the mid-40s, "the portrait busts and heads modeled by Giacometti had now shrunk to the size of a nut. They were intended to reproduce a remembered image that incorporated the sense of space and distance. Also intended to introduce the element of distance were the square pedestals, larger than the small figures and becoming even larger, while the busts and heads themselves became ever smaller" (Schneider, ibid., p. 23).

Tête de Simone de Beauvoir, "[has] the directness and vitality of an apparition perceived all at once and as an integral whole. Probably for the first time in the history of sculpture, a sculptural figure was not a copy of a body in real space, but an imaginary form (as the objects of a painting always are) in its own space, a space that was simultaneously real and imaginary, tangible yet impossible to enter" (Schneider, ibid., p. 27).