Diego (Tête sur socle cubique)

Diego Giacometti was the most enduring presence in his older brother, Alberto’s life. As well as a crucial friend and confidante, he played a key role in Alberto’s artistic practice, often supervising the casting of his plasters; he later worked as an artist in his own right, creating a host of bronze objects and furniture. He was, as Yves Bonnefoy has described, “the devoted collaborator, so aware of Alberto’s needs and even most of his impatient idiosyncrasies that the sculptor could entrust him with all his casting and patination, two quite essential aspects of his world. Without Diego, Alberto would certainly not have sculpted his largest statues… Diego therefore lived at the very heart of the work in progress and Alberto to some extent could consider him another self” (Alberto Giacometti, trans. J. Stewart, Paris, 1991, p. 440).
Diego had traveled to Paris in 1925 to join his brother there. Moving into a small, dilapidated studio at 46 rue Hippolyte-Maindron the following year, the brothers quickly became inseparable. As Alberto forged his career as a sculptor, Diego became a constant and crucial presence in his life, and the two quickly became central figures within the avant-garde art world of Paris. “United since childhood by an extreme understanding and the polarity of their complementary temperaments, they lived in symbiosis, without giving up their autonomy,” the artists’ friend Jean Leymarie wrote. “Diego, more mature and removed from his former milieu, surrounded by new friends, revealed his aesthetic sense and his extreme dexterity” (quoted in F. Baudot, Diego Giacometti, Paris, 2001, p. 8).
In addition, Diego was perhaps the artist’s most important model, “a constant referent across the passage of time and changes in technique, scale, and style” (J. Leymarie, quoted in D. Marchesseau, Diego Giacometti, New York, 1987, p. 15). Giacometti’s depictions of his brother reflect the deep fraternal bond between the pair. His was a face he knew more than any other—every line in his brow, every curve of his facial structure, the contours of his deep-set eye sockets, each gaze, flinch, and passing expression were caught by the artist and memorialized in three-dimensional form in his sculptural portrayals. “The great adventure,” Giacometti once said, “is to see something unknown appear every day in the same face” (quoted in M. Peppiatt, Alberto Giacometti in Postwar Paris, exh. cat., Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, p. 10). It was with his depictions of Diego that Giacometti fully realized this ambitious aim.
Diego (Tête sur socle cubique) is one such work. Raised upon a square base, with his head slightly upturned and gaze raised heavenwards, here Diego appears with a hieratic, iconic presence. More representational than other portraits, the artist has captured the calm, solemn, somewhat inscrutable expression of his brother, creating a work that resonates with majesty and monumentality.