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Lot Essay
"I admire his very young wife for accepting this life," Simone de Beauvoir wrote of the Giacometti's domestic ménage to her lover, Nelson Algren. "Having spent the day as his secretary, [Annette] goes back to their desperate lodgings, she does not have a winter coat and she wears worn-out shoes... He is very attached to her but since he is not the tender sort she has some hard times" (quoted in M. Peppiatt, Alberto Giacometti in Postwar Paris, exh. cat., Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, 2001, p. 10). It was a canny observation from the feminist intellectual who would later call her relationship with Sartre the greatest achievement of her life. De Beauvoir instinctively grasped the difficulty of Alberto and Annette's experiment in loving and, with empathetic understanding, the nature of co-dependency in an age of existential doubt. Giacometti's friends were surprised by how quickly Annette was assimilated into his life, moving directly into his studio, modeling for him all day, and going out with him at night. Yet "it should have been clear from the start," Michael Peppiatt has noted, that "although he was deeply fond of his girlish new companion, Giacometti was in no way prepared to change his style of life to satisfy the needs of a wife" (ibid., p. 9). Theirs would be an unconventional marriage, beset by various interlopers and always in the shadow of Giacometti's work, yet Annette faithfully came to the studio every day until his death in 1966, a constant though enigmatic presence in his life.
After their marriage, Giacometti brought Annette to visit his mother at the family home in Stampa, Switzerland. The ready presence of this model encouraged the artist to work from life. While many of his earlier sculptures represent the ideal woman within a void, drawings such as the present ones describe specific women in the context of their actual surroundings. As David Sylvester writes, "Though working at sculpture mostly from memory, he was painting and drawing from life, usually from Diego or Annette in Paris and from Annette or his mother at Stampa" (in Looking at Giacometti, London, 1994, p. 242). This tendency toward realism, initiated through drawing, would soon influence Giacometti's painting and sculpture production.
Herbert C. Lust designates the period in which the present work was executed as the pinnacle of Giacometti's drawing. "As good as the early drawings are," he writes, "their various techniques were not brought to perfection until the years from 1953 to 1955." Lust's description of the artist's drawings as examples of "architectural orchestration" and "transparent construction" can be witnessed in both the recto and verso drawings here (in Alberto Giacometti, The Complete Graphics, San Francisco, 1991, pp. 206-207).
The present drawings beautifully demonstrate Giacometti's signature dynamism of line; together, they exhibit contrasting ways in which the artist harnessed this kineticism. The recto study of Annette is characterized by a tight, almost anxious energy. The tension in these lines imbues the work with an electric charge, and accounts for its greater tonal contrast. Annette is firmly bordered by the room's architecture, and the entire composition is kept from reaching the sheet's borders. Conversely, the verso is expressed through a looser, lighter application of pencil. Indeed, the woman in the studio is almost swept up in the movement of the composition.
After their marriage, Giacometti brought Annette to visit his mother at the family home in Stampa, Switzerland. The ready presence of this model encouraged the artist to work from life. While many of his earlier sculptures represent the ideal woman within a void, drawings such as the present ones describe specific women in the context of their actual surroundings. As David Sylvester writes, "Though working at sculpture mostly from memory, he was painting and drawing from life, usually from Diego or Annette in Paris and from Annette or his mother at Stampa" (in Looking at Giacometti, London, 1994, p. 242). This tendency toward realism, initiated through drawing, would soon influence Giacometti's painting and sculpture production.
Herbert C. Lust designates the period in which the present work was executed as the pinnacle of Giacometti's drawing. "As good as the early drawings are," he writes, "their various techniques were not brought to perfection until the years from 1953 to 1955." Lust's description of the artist's drawings as examples of "architectural orchestration" and "transparent construction" can be witnessed in both the recto and verso drawings here (in Alberto Giacometti, The Complete Graphics, San Francisco, 1991, pp. 206-207).
The present drawings beautifully demonstrate Giacometti's signature dynamism of line; together, they exhibit contrasting ways in which the artist harnessed this kineticism. The recto study of Annette is characterized by a tight, almost anxious energy. The tension in these lines imbues the work with an electric charge, and accounts for its greater tonal contrast. Annette is firmly bordered by the room's architecture, and the entire composition is kept from reaching the sheet's borders. Conversely, the verso is expressed through a looser, lighter application of pencil. Indeed, the woman in the studio is almost swept up in the movement of the composition.