Galerie Beyeler, Basel
Private collection, since 1972
Basel, Galerie Beyeler, Von Venus zu Venus, September - October 1972, no. 33
Andros, Museum of Contemporary Art, Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation, Alberto Giacometti, 28 June - 6 September 1992, no. 19, p. 67
Andros, Museum of Contemporary Art, Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation, Glancing at the Century, 28 June - 20 September 1998, pp. 98-99, ill. p. 99
Bernard Lamarche-Vadel, “Les sculptures plâtes”, Alberto Giacometti, Nouvelles Éditions Françaises, Paris, 1984, pp. 42-44
Yves Bonnefoy, Alberto Giacometti: Biographie d’une œuvre, Flammarion, Paris, 1991, pp. 163, 165
From 1927 Giacometti had abandoned figurative art and moved towards a more abstract and metaphorical art. The major sources of his inspiration are four: Cycladic art, primitive arts - mainly African and Oceanic - cubism and surrealism. The sculptures he will carry out between 1927 and 1929 will stimulate the curiosity and admiration of art dealers and critics, as well as of André Breton himself. Among them is a series of Flat women, to which belongs the Woman presented here.
These sculptures have in common the extreme simplification of form and are highly reminiscent of the work of Constantin Brâncuşi. What they also share is the same sense of caustic humour, which seems to hide a great deal of despair. The image of woman is annulled the most. It is shown as a sterile figurine, with the basic female features - belly, chest, head - always curved, emphasizing the implication of a hollow pregnancy and, most of all, a mournful character, like gravestones of birth, of life. However, while the woman seems infertile, she is at the same time glorified as a living idol. As Michel Leiris writes, “there is nothing dead in this sculpture; on the contrary, everything is miraculously alive, as in real fetishes one wants to worship - the real fetishes, namely those resembling us and constituting the objectified form of our desire”. In fact, this is true for the Woman. The bottle-shaped body, which looks engraved in the material, resembles both Cycladic figurines and African totems. Looking more closely, the viewer is surprised to see the hair, upright on the one side of the round head, and the crossed arms, the angles of which are in contrast with the dominant curves. The woman is both cubist and surrealistic, figurative and abstract, tangible and elusive.
Although Giacometti will further develop his style over the next few decades and the typical works that will eventually make him famous will be mainly the filament sculptures he created from the mid-1940s, he will never renounce that fruitful period of his career.
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