GIACOMETTI

1Giacometti Annette: Venise, 1960

GiacomettiAnnette: Venise, 1960

GiacomettiAnnette: Venise, 1960

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Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966)Annette: Venise,1960 signed and numbered on the back Alberto Giacometti 6/6inscribed with the foundry mark Susse Fondr Parisbronze with brown patina46.5 x 26.5 x 12.7 cm. (183/8 x 103/8 x 5 in.)Conceived in 1960 and cast in 1964. The edition was 6. A further cast numbered 0/6 was made in 1976 (Giacometti Foundation)

Literature F.-J. Moulin, Giacometti Sculptures, New York, 1964 (another cast illustrated pl.20)P. Selz, Alberto Giacometti, New York, 1965 (painted cast illustrated p.75)R. Hohl, Alberto Giacometti, Paris, 1971, no. 262, p.308 (another cast illustrated pp. 262, 276)J. Dupin, Alberto Giacometti, St Paul-de-Vence, 1972, no.104 (painted cast illustrated) R. Hohl, Alberto Giacometti, New York, 1974, no.19 (another cast illustrated p.107)Y. Bonnefoy, Alberto Giacometti: A Biography of his Works, Paris, 1991, p. 510, no. 515 (another cast illustrated)T. Stoss, P. Elliot, Alberto Giacometti: 1901-1966, exhibition catalogue, London, 1996, p.185, no.208 (another cast illustrated in colour pl. 68).The Alberto and Annette Giacometti Foundation database, no AGD.2236The Alberto and Annette Giacometti Association database, no. AGD 735 (cast no. 1/6)

Provenance The ArtistMarguerite and Aimé Maeght, Saint- Paul-de-Vence, acquired directly from the artistMaeght sale; Loudmer, Paris, Collection Marguerite et Aimé Maeght, 27 Oct. 1982, lot 51 (illustrated)Private collection, Paris, bought at the above sale

Exhibited Zurich, Galerie Maeght, Nov. 1981- Jan. 1982, no. 23.

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Alberto Giacometti met Annette Arm in Geneva in 1943, during the

Second World War. His friend Jean Starobinski recalled the exact moment:

“When Annette appeared at his side in Geneva, I said to myself that

she was expected: a young woman who faces one directly, who looks

and speaks and behaves directly, infinitely frank and infinitely reserved,

with wonderful straightforwardness.” (Bonnefoy, 1991, p.356). Annette

followed Giacometti to Paris in 1946 as his secretary and companion, and,

to the surprise of many of his friends, the confirmed bachelor married the

young Swiss woman three years later. By 1960, however, the year in which

Giacometti sculpted the first bust of Annette in clay, the marriage was in a

state of upheaval. It was the same year in which the artist first sculpted his

friend, the Japanese philosopher Isaku Yanaihara, with whom Annette had

had an earlier romantic relationship. Though it had been conducted with

Giacometti’s approval, a recent cooling between Annette and Yanaihara

led to some tension during the sittings. In the previous year, Giacometti

had met a pretty 20-year-old prostitute called Caroline who soon became

his mistress and, after 1960, his muse. Despite her own affair with

Yanaihara, Annette was intensely jealous of Caroline. The uneasy tension

and turbulent emotions doubtless prompted Giacometti’s decision to

turn his attention once more to Annette as his model, immortalising both

her and their relationship in the series of ten portrait busts. Giacometti’s

artistic process, in which he demanded of his models absolute immobility

for hours on end, must have inspired him to look at Annette with fresh

eyes in these final years before his death in 1966. As Giacometti himself

said of the process of creating a portrait, “The more I work the more I see

things differently, that is, everything gains in grandeur every day, becomes

more and more unknown, more and more beautiful. The closer I come,

the grander it is, the more remote it is.”

Alexander Liberman, Alberto and Annette Giacometti in the Studio, 1951, Black and white photograph.

Annette Giacometti

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This was not the first time Annette had posed for her husband; she

featured in a number of drawings and paintings in the earlier years of their

relationship, both seated and standing, nude and clothed. However, apart

from a small early work dated 1946, this was the first time Giacometti had

modelled Annette in sculpture; he was fifty-nine, and she was thirty-seven.

There are in total ten editioned bronze portrait busts of Annette, the last

of which, Annette X, was made the year before his death (Centre Georges

Pompidou, Paris). The present work is the final cast (of an edition of

six) of the first version, Annette: Venise, cast in 1964, four years after the

original clay sculpture was modelled. As in all of the Annettes, we are

struck by the highly-worked surface texture and crisp modelling, with the

undulating, pinched surface of the original clay model serving as evidence

of its facture. The figure – typical of Giacometti’s manner – is reduced

to its essentials; in all except Annette II, the base is integrated into the bust

itself. The patination is surprisingly colourful, appearing in different lights

alternately bronze, gold, and almost greenish in hue, with bits of plaster

from the mould still clinging to the surface.

Anonymous, Annette Giacometti at Stampa, 1961, Black and white photograph.

Anonymous, Alberto and Anette accompanied by Isaku Yanaîhara, 1961,

Black and white photograph.

Franco Cianetti, Giacometti Modelling a Bust of Annette, c.1962,



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What strikes the viewer most immediately, of course, is Annette’s intense

and fixed stare, the eyes incised into the wet clay with a pointed implement.

The unblinking gaze was of paramount importance to the artist, and his

close scrutiny of his model is wholly evident here. Indeed, Giacometti

said of women: “The nearer one gets, the more distant they are” (quoted

in D. Sylvester, Looking at Giacometti, London, 1994, p. 30). We can follow

his struggle to capture in a fixed material the countenance of a woman

simultaneously so intimately known and so remote. Both the Annette and

the Diego series (the latter using his brother as model) are significant within

Giacometti’s oeuvre for the unusual sense of closeness between artist and

model. Typically, his figures are smaller than life size, contributing to and

enhancing the profound sense of psychological remove between artist and

subject (and, by extension, between viewer and subject). The sense of

the isolation of the individual can be tied to the existentialist movement

and in particular to the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, whom Giacometti

met and befriended in 1941. However, the scale of the Annette series

is comparatively larger, and the figure is thus interpreted by the viewer

as being more approximate, and therefore more intimate. Artistically,

Giacometti found this physical closeness challenging, observing: “It is

impossible to do a thing the way I see it because the closer I get the

more differently I see.” Stylistically, these late sculptures betray the artist’s

ongoing interest in native African and Oceanic arts, a genre that had first

impacted Western art with the Cubist experiments of Picasso.

Ernst Scheidegger, Giacometti working on a portrait of Annette, c. 1950, Black and white photograph.

Giacometti Annette: Venise, 1960

Giacometti was from 1947 represented by the Paris gallery of Aimé

and Marguerite (“Guiguite”) Maeght, whose timely friendship with first

Pierre Bonnard and, through Bonnard, Henri Matisse, had earned them

a considerable fortune. Maeght enticed Giacometti to join his gallery by

promising to fund the casting costs of the thirty-seven sculptures then

collected in the artist’s studio, waiting to be cast in bronze. The first

Giacometti exhibition at Galerie Maeght opened in the early summer of

1951. (Successive solo exhibition were staged in the summers of 1954;

1957; and 1961.) The title of the sculpture, Annette: Venise, pays homage to

a city Giacometti had first visited in 1920 during his studies.

Doubtless a cast of this sculpture was also exhibited at the Venice Biennale

in 1962. In October 1961, 10 days after his 60th birthday, Giacometti

visited Venice at the invitation of the Biennale officials who wanted

Giacometti to show a large group of works (paintings and sculptures) in

the principal Pavilion. Returning to Venice in June 1962, with his brother

Diego, he supervised the installation of 42 sculptures, 40 paintings and

more than a dozen drawings. He was awarded the main prize for sculpture.

This exhibition firmly established Giacometti on the international stage.

In 1964, the year the present cast was made, André Malraux, Minister for

Cultural Affairs, inaugurated the Marguerite and Aimé Maeght Foundation

in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. The Giacometti courtyard, one of the world’s most

famous “in situ” installations, was given over entirely and permanently to a

group of sculptures selected and set in place by the artist.

Giacometti & Maeght

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The present cast of Annette: Venise was cast in 1964 and entered Marguerite

and Aimé Maeght’s private collection, where it remained until the sale of

selected works from the Maeght Collection in 1982.

This sculpture is sold with a certificate of authenticity issued by the

Giacometti Committee, dated 17th December 2012. The work is

referenced by the Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti in the Alberto

Giacometti database (AGD) as number 2236.

Giacometti at the Venice Bienalle, 1962, Black and white photograph.

Alexander Liberman, Annette and Giacometti in the studio in paris, 1962,



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