Alberto Giacometti (1901 – 1966), Annette d'après nature (Nu debout)

Alberto Giacometti (1901 – 1966), Annette d'après nature (Nu debout). Photo Sotheby's.

Inscribed with the signature Alberto Giacometti, numbered 0/6 and inscribed with the foundry mark Susse Fondeur Paris. Bronze. Height: 20 5/8 in., 52.5 cm. Conceived in 1954 and cast in 1962. Estimation 3,500,000 — 4,500,000 USD

Provenance: Acquired from the artist in April 1964
PROPERTY FROM THE PIERRE AND TANA MATISSE FOUNDATION, NEW YORK

Litterature: James Lord, “Alberto Giacometti” in L’Oeil, January 15, 1955, illustration of another cast p. 14
Jacques Dupin, Alberto Giacometti, Paris, 1962, illustration of another cast p. 267 (titled Annette)
Alberto Giacometti: Zeichnungen, Gemälde, Skulpturen, Galerie Beyeler, Basel, 1963, illustration of another cast (titled Figure feminine)
Reinhold Hohl, Alberto Giacometti, New York, 1971, illustration of another cast p. 197 (as dating from 1954 and titled Femme nu)
Alberto Giacometti (exhibition catalogue), Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, 1978, illustration of another cast p. 100
Giacometti, Sculpture, Paintings, Drawings (exhibition catalogue), Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; City of Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, Bristol & Serpentine Gallery, London, 1981, illustration of another cast p. 31 (as dating from 1954)
Alberto Giacometti Exposition au Japon (exhibition catalogue), The Seibu Museum of Art, Seibu, 1983, illustration of another cast p. 31 (as dating from 1954 and titled Figure d’après nature)
André Kuenzi, Alberto Giacometti (exhibition catalogue), Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Martigny, 1986, illustration of another cast p. 274 (as dating from 1954)
Kosme María de Barañano, Alberto Giacometti, dibujo, escultura, pintura, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, 1990-91, illustration of another cast p. 89 (as dating from 1954 and titled Figura de pie II)
Yves Bonnefoy, Alberto Giacometti, A Biography of His Work, Paris, 1991, illustration of another cast p. 384 (as dating from 1954)
Christian Klemm, Alberto Giacometti (exhibition catalogue), The Museum of Modern Art, New York & Kunsthaus Zürich, 2001-02, illustration of another cast p. 219 (as dating from 1954)
L’Atelier d’Alberto Giacometti. Collection de la Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti (exhibition catalogue), Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2007-08, illustration of the plaster p. 404 (as dating from 1954 and titled Annette d’après nature)
Markus Brüderlin & Toni Stooss, eds., Alberto Giacometti: The Origin of Space (exhibition catalogue), Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg & Museum der Moderne Mönchsberg, Salzburg, 2011, illustration of another cast pp. 153 & 441 (as dating from 1954 and titled Annette debout d’après nature)

Annette d'après nature is an elegant example one of the most important motifs of Giacometti's art - the standing female figure. Throughout the 1940s and 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. His many sculptural versions of this motif, most notably his series known as Femmes de Venise highlight the dramatic contours of the body and the power of a single gesture.

Conceived in 1954, at the height of Giacometti's international acclaim, the present sculpture is related to the remarkable series of Giacometti's Femmes de Venise, which made their debut at the Venice Biennale in 1955. After his success at the Biennale, Giacometti continued to develop the theme of standing female figures, elongating and accentuating the feminine 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, followed by Femme debout of 1961, which was to be one of his final works on this subject.

The scale of his sculptures was an important component in Giacometti's creative vision. Sculptures that were too big, or life size, 'infuriated' him because they relied too much on imagination rather than on existential experience. On the other hand, he found works that were too small to be 'intolerable' because they were difficult to handle and materially unsustainable. The present work was an ideal form for him to manipulate. He could walk around it while simultaneously twisting and pinching it at all points and angles. Working on this scale he liberated his figure from the mimicry of reality, eliminating the need for viewers to imagine the work in proportional relation to themselves. By doing so, his figure became purely a concrete object in a clearly defined space. 

Dieter Honisch explains the complexities Giacometti faced with sculptures of this stature: “The pictorial distance of Giacometti's figure, which rendered them thin and small, automatically raised the question of how they were to be granted the tactile proximity that is essential to sculpture. Giacometti solved this problem in a two-fold way. Firstly, he gave his figures a large base or pedestal.  Secondly, as his friends report, he generated a sense of proximity by incessantly fingering the clay models, hence giving the impression of surfaces seen from close up. As a result, no one figure ever looked similar to another, because the final state emerged only from a continuous series of innumerable sculptural actions” (D. Honisch, 'Scale in Giacometti's Sculpture', in Alberto Giacometti, Sculpture, Paintings, Drawings, Munich & New York, 1994, p. 68).