Alberto Giacometti is the foremost sculptor of the twentieth century. His figures are imbued with a powerful, totemic presence which radiates into the space around them. Through a lifet.mes of constant experimentation and work, Giacometti’s artistic vocabulary refined itself to three primary forms: the walking man, the head or bust and the standing female figure. Femme debout (Poseuse I) belongs to this last category, one that Giacometti had revolutionized with his Femme au chariot in 1943-45, redefined in his Femmes de Venise in 1956 and brought to its monumental conclusion in his Grande Femme I-IV in 1960 (see figs. 1-3).
Center: Fig. 2 Alberto Giacometti, Femme de Venise II, 1956, painted bronze, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Right: Fig. 3 Alberto Giacometti with the plaster of Grande Femme IV in the courtyard of his studio in 1960. Photograph by Annette Giacometti 1960. Art © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Femme debout (Poseuse I) was created just two years before Giacometti would make, in haste, his various Femme de Venise. In the present work we see the primary female form of these Venetian Women already firmly established, from the slope of her feet on the base to the squaring of her shoulders to the space that was intended between arms and torso—a space that would exist in the first of the Femme de Venise and have completely disappeared by their final iteration.
Right: Fig. 5 Alberto Giacometti, Figurine au grand socle, 1955, Fondation Giacometti, Paris © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
The present hand-painted bronze beautifully evokes Giacometti’s fascination with ancient art. Throughout his life he had drawn inspiration from the arts of Egypt, Greece and Rome. He was particularly fascinated by Etruscan and Egyptian statuary. The influence of Egyptian art on his work was recently explored in an exhibition at the Fondation Giacometti in Paris in 2021. Pairing Giacometti’s works with works from the Musée du Louvre’s collects ion like a 12th Dynasty statue of Lady Henan with Figurine au grand socle, a painted plaster from 1955, further reinforces this dialogue (see figs. 4 and 5). So deep was his fascination with the ancient that he used the accident of sculpture facture as a part of his artistic practice. According to Catherine Grenier, “His interest in archaeological objects incited him to include in the final sculpture accidents incurred during creation. When the arms broke on his standing figures because they were too thin, he kept the stumps of shoulders and hands resting on hips” (Catherine Grenier, Alberto Giacometti, A Biography, Paris, 2018, p. 220).
In examining Femme debout (Poseuse I), a natural question arises—did the figure originally have fully formed arms and in what part of the artist’s process were they removed? The present work shares the same form as the bronze edition bearing the same name from 1954. All other casts, however, lack the elongated proper-right arm and do not bear the finely hand-painted surface. These two features set apart the present cast as a unique interpretation of this form Giacometti’s oeuvre.
The artist’s use of hand painting was employed only upon occasion. His fascination with form extended to the presentation of the surface of his works after they were cast. Occasionally Giacometti would enhance the patinas of select bronzes by either chemically manipulating the patination process to produce varying tonality of the bronze—usually carried out by his brother Diego in the studio—or by Alberto directly applying paint onto the surface of the bronze, as is the case in the present work. According to Valerie Fletcher the artist “… painted some casts spontaneously, for example when they were first brought back from the foundry or as they were being installed in an exhibition” (Exh. Cat., Washington, D.C., The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Alberto Giacometti 1901-1966, 1988-89, p. 66).
“If I paint it it tends to look much more true than if it’s not painted. That’s why I always feel I want to make painted sculpture”
With the support of a small armature, Giacometti first created this work in clay or plaster, molding and pinching his forms to achieve highly tactile final figures. Next, he relied on his brother Diego to supervise the casting of the work in bronze, preserving every nick and impression that he had created in the original medium. This splendid cast, which was made during the artist's lifet.mes , bears all the markings and fine details of this hands-on process. Most works bearing this kind of precise detail are now held in museum collects ions and those that have come to auction account for some of the highest prices ever achieved for the artist's work. Femme debout (Poseuse I) was acquired by Joseph H. Hazen in 1961 from World House Galleries and has not been exhibited publically since the mid-1960s.
