‘Projet pour un passage’ testifies to Giacometti’s engagement with the culture of sub-Saharan Africa, which was attracting great interest in avant-garde circles at the time. At first glance the curved shapes resemble models of earth buildings, with the plaster trees in the second-to-last courtyard and the vessels in the rearmost chamber complementing the illusion. The title thus becomes a reference to ‘rites of passage’ and in particular the initiation rites of puberty.

Viewed from above as an organic whole, the sculpture can also be read as a recumbent woman. The idea of conceiving a sculpture as a ‘model’ is ground-breaking, as is the idea of an architectural ‘environment’ through which the viewer could walk if it were executed in life size.

Material

Plaster

Dimensions

16 x 126 x 42 cm

Creditline

Kunsthaus Zürich, Alberto Giacometti-Stiftung, 1965

Object number

GS 020

Signature

inscr. in pencil on basin, front right: Alberto Giacometti plâtre original; incised on back: Alberto Giacometti [carved]

Provenance

• Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft | Kunsthaus Zürich (Museum), frühestens ab 1965, Leihgabe
• Alberto Giacometti-Stiftung (Sammlung), Zürich, frühestens ab 1965, Übernahme
• Alberto Giacometti-Syndikat, Zürich, 1963, Kauf
• Galerie Beyeler, Basel, 1963, Kauf
• Sammlung G. David Thompson, Pittsburgh
• Patricia Echaurren (Sammlerin), 1948
• Alberto Giacometti