Alberto Giacometti, Femme debout (detail), circa 1961, cast 1993. Estimate £550,000 - 750,000. 20th Century and Contemporary Art Evening Sale, London.
Wonderfully exemplifying Alberto Giacometti’s recurring motif of the standing woman, which occupied his sculptural practice throughout the 1940s and until his death in 1966, Femme debout portrays a thin, rising silhouette whose arms have fused to her torso, morphing almost perfectly into a vertical line. Reaching just over 45cm high, the sculpture is reminiscent of Giacometti’s early forays into the human form, which materialized on smaller scales in the wake of World War II, and subsequently grew taller.
Alberto Giacometti, Femme debout, circa 1961, cast 1993. Estimate £550,000 - 750,000. 20th Century and Contemporary Art Evening Sale, London.
Conceived circa 1961, Femme debout follows the culmination of Giacometti’s exploration of the female form, embodied by his monumental four Grandes femmes, 1960, which formed part of an unrealized project commissioned by Chase Manhattan Plaza in New York City. In its jewel-like dimensions, the sculpture conveys the artist’s ability to suggest soul and humanity in the minutest details.
In Femme debout, the nameless figure is sculpted as a narrow, fragmentary, yet infinitely delicate entity. Her blade-like figure seems to defy the laws of gravity, hoisting vertically despite surrounding pressure. To conceive these sculptures, the artist would build up the figure, and subsequently remove more and more of the form in a blur of frenzied activity. Forming part of a wider body of work defined by slender, emaciated forms, Femme debout conveys a vivid but fragile presence: a discreet meditation on the human condition. The chiseled woman's resemblance to Giacometti's myriad anthropomorphic sculptures prompts reflection on “that precious point at which human beings are confronted with the most irreducible fact: the loneliness of being exactly equivalent to all others.”
Alberto Giacometti at his studio in Paris, France 1962 © The Estate of Alberto Giacometti (Fondation Giacometti, Paris and ADAGP, Paris), licensed in the UK by ACS and DACS, London 2020. Image: Wolfgang Kuhn/United Archives via Getty Images.
Perhaps one of the most prolific subject matters within the painterly and sculptural realms, the female muse nonetheless held particular meaning for Giacometti, whose model was most frequently his wife, Annette Arm. “Annette was a passionate person, funny and surprising,” wrote Paola Carola, Giacometti’s only surviving model. “But above all she was in love with Alberto and his work. She looked after his sculptures with a love that flooded the studio.” Reciprocally, and as exemplified by Femme debout, Giacometti infused loving sentiments within his female sculptures. “When working on a female figure in clay [Giacometti's] fingers would run up and down the sculpture, pinching, gouging, scraping, caressing, as if they responded to a will of their own, independent of the incidental artist.” Exuding a blend of pristine tenderness and carnal immediacy, Femme debout typifies the artist’s inimitable human touch, which successfully transformed his bronze forms into soulful entities.
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