Details of Alberto Giacometti Three Early Sculptures
The shifting enthusiasms of European art before and after the Second World War traces Alberto Giacometti’s remarkable career. He devised innovative sculptural forms, as a Surrealist in the 1930s, sometimes reminiscent of toys and games. He led the way in creating a style as an Existentialist after the war, summing up the philosophy’s interests in perception, anxiety, and alienation. The Swiss-born and the Paris-based artist is most famous for his sculpture and is perhaps best remembered for his figurative works.
Gazing Head (1928)
Giacometti often experienced difficulty in sculpting from life In his early years. The began to work from memory in this despair. Arguably the artist’s first truly original work, the early plaster bust Gazing Head, illustrates the culmination of this effort. Giacometti’s economical placement of smooth hollow for a definition of the flatness of the face and head resulted in a bust that is at once abstract and figurative. And yet the hidden theme of the work, the act of gazing, invites viewers to think whether what they are looking at is, in fact, a mirror. Gazing Head was first exhibited in Paris in 1929, and immediately grabbed the attention of the French Surrealists, beginning an association that would bond the early part of Giacometti’s career.
Suspended Ball (1930–31)
Gazing Head was one of the first work that caught the attention of the Surrealists, but it was Suspended Ball, first exhibited at Galerie Pierre in 1930, that urge André Breton to invite Alberto Giacometti to join the group. At once the sculpture’s white globular the mysterious segment below it form floating freely and trapped in a cage — and all display the erotic and dream-like qualities that the Surrealists adored. Critics have also associated the sculpture with the ideas of Breton’s rival, Georges Bataille despite this association with Breton’s group. The elements in the sculpture have been argued that are deliberately dark and mysterious since while they seem to suggest a sexual act, it is unclear which element is male and which female.
Hands Holding the Void (Invisible Object) (1934)
Giacometti started to stray from the Surrealists after his brief association with the group and Hands Holding the Void illustrates this. It was created as a monument to the artist’s recently death father. Certain primitive and Egyptian elements are incorporated The emptiness held by the figure is possibly the soul, or what the Egyptians called kâ. While the Surrealists hold on to this work, the figurative elements indicate that the artist was beginning to move beyond them.
