.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Alberto Giacometti's Figure à l'intérieur presents the viewer with a haze of pencil marks which appear to coalesce in order to form the mirage-like image of a nude woman standing in a room. With its chairs and lamp, the viewer wonders if this is some domestic interior like those of the artist's family home at Stampa, in his native Switzerland, rather than his ramshackle Paris studio. Certainly, the flowers visible in the background add a homely touch, implying that this is someone's room, rather than the studio itself.
During the 1950s and early 1960s in particular, Giacometti explored the theme of the nude in the interior in his drawings and lithographs. In particular, it was a theme that recurred in the printed book which he created, considered a posthumous masterpiece on its publication a few years after his death, Paris sans fin. In that work, which he began in 1957 and essentially completed in 1962, only a year before Figure à l'intérieur was acquired by the family of the present owner, Giacometti collected and collated half a decade's worth of images of Paris. From the street scenes to intimate nudes, this resulted in an intriguing and highly emotional reaction to the French capital, a cross-section of life there, showing the avenues, bars and people from a highly personal perspective and from Giacometti's unique perspective.
The streaking marks with which Giacometti has created Figure à l'intérieur, with the denser hatching all the more condensed around the woman's front, where the shade has been captured with incredible sensitivity. The density of that area adds a sculptural quality that relates this picture to Giacometti's sculptures. At the same time, his delicate handling of the light effects in this interior are all the more evident in the woman's shoulder, which has hardly been drawn at all, showing a bold and deliberate restraint on the part of the artist which allows the viewer to read into that area light reflected on skin.
Giacometti himself linked his drawings to all his other works. He valued the discipline as a support for the other media that he explored, and also crucially as a medium in its own right. 'What I believe is that, whether or not sculpture and painting are involved, drawing is the only thing that counts,' he once explained to James Lord. 'One should be concerned only, exclusively, with drawing. If one could master drawing, everything else would be possible' (Giacometti, quoted in Y. Bonnefoy, Alberto Giacometti: A Biography of His Work, trans. J. Stewart, Paris, 1991, p. 85).
During the 1950s and early 1960s in particular, Giacometti explored the theme of the nude in the interior in his drawings and lithographs. In particular, it was a theme that recurred in the printed book which he created, considered a posthumous masterpiece on its publication a few years after his death, Paris sans fin. In that work, which he began in 1957 and essentially completed in 1962, only a year before Figure à l'intérieur was acquired by the family of the present owner, Giacometti collected and collated half a decade's worth of images of Paris. From the street scenes to intimate nudes, this resulted in an intriguing and highly emotional reaction to the French capital, a cross-section of life there, showing the avenues, bars and people from a highly personal perspective and from Giacometti's unique perspective.
The streaking marks with which Giacometti has created Figure à l'intérieur, with the denser hatching all the more condensed around the woman's front, where the shade has been captured with incredible sensitivity. The density of that area adds a sculptural quality that relates this picture to Giacometti's sculptures. At the same time, his delicate handling of the light effects in this interior are all the more evident in the woman's shoulder, which has hardly been drawn at all, showing a bold and deliberate restraint on the part of the artist which allows the viewer to read into that area light reflected on skin.
Giacometti himself linked his drawings to all his other works. He valued the discipline as a support for the other media that he explored, and also crucially as a medium in its own right. 'What I believe is that, whether or not sculpture and painting are involved, drawing is the only thing that counts,' he once explained to James Lord. 'One should be concerned only, exclusively, with drawing. If one could master drawing, everything else would be possible' (Giacometti, quoted in Y. Bonnefoy, Alberto Giacometti: A Biography of His Work, trans. J. Stewart, Paris, 1991, p. 85).