Family of the artist

Private Co🍸llection, Sꦅwitzerland (sold: Christie's, London, November 28, 1994, lot 35)

Acquired at the above sale

Geneva, Musée Rath et Cabinet des Estampes, Art du XXe Siècle, Collections genevoises, 1973, no. 173

Tampere (Finland), Sara Hildenin Taidemuseo, Giacometti, 1992

Martigny, Fondation Gianadda, Alberto Giacometti, 1986, no. 150, 𒀰illustrated in the catalogue (as dating from 1956)

Original canvas. No retouchings appear under ultra-violet light. This work is in excellent, original condition.
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The startling Tête d'homme is the personification of Gia✱cometti's existential dilemma in the last month of his life.   Although this depiction is extremely similar in styling and modeling to Giacometti's portraits of his brother Diego, the model here﷽ is believed to be Pierre Josse, a friend of the artist, who Giacometti painted in another portrait around the same time.  In this intimate portrayal from 1964-65, the man's visage emerges from a smoky halo in the form of a tangled web of black lines.  His features take shape in a frenzy of overlapping strokes, which have been scratched away around the hollows of the eyes to expose lighter-colored layers of paint.  Against the sepia background the ghostly head appears all but disembodied, save for the simple outline of his shoulders and the touches of white that highlight his jacket.

The artist completed the present portrait around the same time he was working on full-body oil depictions of his mistress Caroline.  With the latter works, Giac𝐆ometti struggled with the visual confrontation between viewer and subject and eliminated all perspectival references from his compositions.  But when he turned to this po🦄rtrait of his friend, he focused his attention on the singular image of the face.  

Giacometti's late portraits are all inextricably linked to the artist's confirmation of his own mortality and the personal turmoil that clouded his life during the Post-War years.  These stark images were a conduit for expressing his anxiety surrounding these issues that became central to the Existentialist movement.   During the final years of his life his portraits, especially those of his brother Diego, were, according to Valerie Fletcher, "a vehicle for Alberto's intuition of the human psyche, prey to an indefinable and frightening emotion, perhaps apprehensive of an inevitable and increasingly imminent death" (V. Fletcher, Alberto Giacometti (ex. cat.),𒅌 Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, 1996, p. 30).