Mature Style
1946–1958
First in drawings, Giacometti develops his elongated figures, a fundamental feature of his mature style. 1947 is a year of great activity in drawing and sculpture. Giacometti works directly in plaster, Diego helping him by preparing the wire armatures.
Pierre Matisse, favourably impressed by these recent works, offers the artist a solo show at his gallery, where it opens in January 1948. Sartre writes his essay The Search for the Absolute for the exhibition catalogue. In 1950, Giacometti begins to paint some of his bronzes. His second exhibition at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in November and December 1950 cements his success.
A period of great sculptural and pictorial creativity continues. In 1955, several bronze editions of his sculptures are produced for three major retrospectives: at the Arts Council of Great Britain in London, the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in Krefeld and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. In 1956, the artist works on a standing female figure in clay. Diego subsequently makes a cast each time Giacometti is satisfied with the result. This method leads to some fifteen plaster versions, nine of which are later cast in bronze. Invited to exhibit in the French Pavilion at the Venice Biennale that year, Giacometti presents six of these plasters for the first time, accounting for the fact that they are all still known as the Femmes de Venise.
In October 1956, he meets Isaku Yanaihara, a professor of French philosophy, who becomes his model, and sits for a series of oil portraits and two clay sculptures. His difficulties in rendering Yanaihara’s oriental features caused Giacometti to reconsider his theory of visual perception. During this period of uncertainty, his paintings became increasingly monochromatic.
