Fall 2022 - The Figure

B A C K S T O R Y
06
In the postwar years, with the rise of existential thought in
Paris, Giacometti began making the tall, attenuated forms for
which he is best known today. Although he often captured
likenesses of specific individuals in busts (his brother Diego
and his wife Annette were recurring subjects), he also
produced sculptures of anonymous figures, as seen in his
series of walking men and standing women. Their elongated
frames and roughly textured surfaces make them appear
as stand-ins for humanity at large. Synthesizing figuration,
Surrealism, and abstraction, they seem to reflect both on iconic
images from antiquity and on the modern human condition.
These figures demonstrate what the existentialist philosopher
Jean-Paul Sartre referred to as Giacometti’s “insistent
search for the absolute.” In the catalogue preface for
Giacometti’s 1948 exhibition at Pierre Matisse Gallery, Sartre
wrote, “His ambiguous images disconcert, breaking as they do
with the most cherished habits of our eyes. . . . do they come,
we ask, from a concave mirror, from the fountain of youth, or
from a camp of displaced persons?”
More recently, in the 2022 exhibition catalogue Alberto
Giacometti: Toward the Ultimate Figure, Catherine Grenier,
director of Fondation Giacometti, stated, “He considered that
the main role of art is to reflect reality, particularly through
the image of the human body, but he did not hesitate pushing
representation to its limits.” For the rest of his life, Giacometti
continued testing those limits in his search for the absolute,
creating and often destroying works in his efforts to distill the
figure to its most essential elements.
71 × 10 5/8 × 38 1/4”
Man in Motion
Giacometti’s Walking Man I (1960) derived from a commission for
the plaza of the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York City. The artist
conceived of a three-part installation, including bronze sculptures of
a tall woman, a large head, and a walking man. However, he struggled
with getting the proportions right. Unsatisfied with the results of
his models, including this one, he withdrew from the project in 1961.
Nevertheless, that same year Giacometti won the Carnegie Prize
for this sculpture.