Alberto Giacometti

Private Collection

Peter Beye & Dieter Honisch, Alberto Giacometti, Skulpturen, Gemälde, Seichnungen, Graphik, Berlin, 1987, nos. 190-92, illustration of bronze casts p. 280

Tête sur socle: Variegated surface is inherent to artists process. Small scuff at base of neck on figure's right near small studio stain, otherwise fine. Very good condition. Femme debout: Minor cracking at front of figure's torso with small associated loss, otherwise fine. Work is in very good condition. L'homme qui marche: Small surface nick at toe on back leg. Minor surface dirt at crevices, otherwise fine. Work is in very good condition.
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Executed in 1959 during the height of Giacometti's mature period, these works, jewel-like in scale, are the original plaster maquettes for the monumental project intended for the Chase Manhattan Plaza in New York City's financial district. Chris Klemm explains the genesis of this project: "In 1956 Gordon Bunshaft, the architect of the headquarters of the Chase Manhattan Bank, invited Giacometti to design a group of sculpted figures for the plaza on Pine Street in New York City. His suggestions that the Three Walking Men of 1949 could be enlarged to a height of nearly sixty feet was hardly likely to find favor with an artist for whom questions of dimension were a central issue. But after lengthy deliberations Giacometti proposed a group of larger-than-life-size sculptures: a standing woman, a walking man, and a head on a pedestal, representing the three major themes that almost exclusively occupied him in his mature sculptural work. He made tiny models and started, in his cramped studio, to work on a number of variants for the large figures...without ever arriving at their ultimate designation" (Chris Klemm in Alberto Giacometti (exhibition catalogue), The Museum of Modern Art, New York & Kunsthaus, Zurich, 2001-02, p. 232).

A committee consisting of curators and prominent figures from major public museums in New York and Boston selected Giacometti over Alexander Calder and Isamu Noguchi for the project. Given Giacometti's lifelong fascination with the theme of city squares, as well as his high international acclaim, he was perhaps the obvious choice for this commission. According to James Lord, the artist "was immediately responsive to the American proposal. It is true that he felt a keen nostalgia for the idea of executing a sculpture to be placed in a city square, and that the theme of people seen either singly or in groups in urban environments had long been important to him... He had no time to go to New York... Therefore he was provided with a tiny scale model of building and plaza, allowing him to toy, as it were, with sculptural possibilities. As he was no stranger to the minuscule, this seemed perfectly practicable, and he quickly had an idea. He saw the plaza populated by three sculptures, each an embodiment of his main aesthetic preoccupations: a head, a female figure, and a man walking. He would do much work with the Chase Manhattan Plaza in mind, but only the idea mattered, of course, not the place" (James Lord, Giacometti. A Biography. New York, 1983, pp 377-378).

It is likely that these diminutive plasters were created in relation to the scale model Giacometti was provided, and it is fascinating to imagine how the artist might have played with the arrangement of these iconic motifs in the space. Giacometti later abandoned the idea of a multi-figure installation in favor of a single monolithic female form, but died before any version could be realized. As the only extant lifetime evidence of Giacometti's original concept, these plasters reveal a remarkable insight into the master's process and a glimpse of how the landscape of lower Manhattan might have looked.