With ‘Tête qui regarde’ and the other disc-shaped sculptures (see GS 011, GS 012 and GS 169), Giacometti makes his first wholly autonomous and novel contribution to modern sculpture. The reduction of the face to a horizontal and a vertical element echoes Hodler’s ‘Parallelism’, with its symbolist exaggeration of the two fundamental orientations.

The disembodied membrane that merely modulates light fascinated the Surrealists of the journal ‘Documents’, in which the first ground-breaking article about Giacometti by Michel Leiris was published in 1929. The Surrealists saw it as a realization of a projection from the world of inner imaginings.

Material

Plaster

Dimensions

39 x 37 x 5.5 cm

Creditline

Kunsthaus Zürich, Alberto Giacometti-Stiftung, 1965

Object number

GS 010

Signature

inscr. on plinth, back, with brush: Alberto Giacometti 19..; the last two numbers have been rubbed off and added in pencil above the old signature: 27; at the same time added in pencil over the old signature: Alberto Giacometti 1927

Provenance

• ab 1965, Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft | Kunsthaus Zürich (Museum), Zürich, Leihgabe
• ab 1965, Alberto Giacometti-Stiftung (Sammlung), Zürich, Übereignung
• 1963, Alberto Giacometti-Syndikat, Kauf
• 1963, Galerie Beyeler (Galerie), Basel, Kauf
• G. David Thompson (*1899 Newark, OH, +1965 Pittsburgh, PA) (Sammler/-in), Pittsburgh
• Alberto Giacometti (*1901 Borgonovo bei Stampa, +1966 Chur) (Künstler/-in)