Label Type
Cultural/Historical ContextLabel
"Existing between abstraction and figuration, the ideal and the real, is the art of Alberto Giacometti. Alberto, the son of the impressionist painter Giovannia Giacometti is best known for his tall, vanishingly thin bronze sculptures of walking men and standing women, as well as for his numerous paintings, prints, and drawings.
He settled in Paris in 1922, becoming associated first with the cubists and then the surrealists. In his mature work, he concentrated on three basic themes for his attenuated figures—the seated portrait, the walking man, and the standing female nude.
Throughout Giacometti’s life, drawing was a means of clarifying his personal vision. He allowed rapid powerful lines to swirl over, around, and inside the figures defining them without literally describing them. The lines of force reveal the pervading tension between naturalistic and abstract forms and appear to have biological as well as psychological purpose
In “The Search,” the immobile female figure stands like a thin totem with its feet anchored solidly to a platform. This bare figure, reduced to a sketchy gesture, is seen with a naturalistic male bust positioned over a sculpture stand, seemingly in the context of the artist’s studio. The bust most likely represents his lifelong assistant and brother Diego; the standing female is probably his muse and mistress, a prostitute named Caroline. The two objects invoke gender roles that are common to Giacometti’s work; namely the female as passive and immobile object of scrutiny and the male as a more expressive and involved persona.
Giacometti’s consistent representation of women shows immobile and remote figures with hands rigidly at their sides. This may reflect Giacometti’s interest in ancient and primitive figures such as Cycladic fertility goddesses, Oceanic carvings, and especially Egyptian statues in similar standing and walking poses with large staring eyes."