Fondation Giacometti

Isaku Yanaihara (1918-1989) was a philosophy professor in Japan, a true connoisseur of the works of Sartre, Genet and Camus, whose book, L' Etranger, he translated into Japanese. He met Alberto Giacometti in Paris in 1955 and regularly posed for the artist from October 1956, then during his stays in France during the summers of 1957, 1959, 1960 and 1961. In several texts, among them an article published in the magazine “Derrière le miroir” in 1961, Yanaihara described those long sittings, which Giacometti, with obstinate requestioning, never managed to be satisfied with. The work on Yanaihara's portrait was experienced as a challenge and an adventure by the artist, who persevered for years on that same model while gradually realising the impossibility of “copying a head exactly as one sees it”.
The Japanese philosopher is represented as a bust, the gaze directed straight ahead. Several brushstrokes in grey colour have been applied around the head to camouflage the retouches made in the course of the work. The ochre background presents no indicators of space or depth, Giacometti's traditional frameworks. The more detailed aspect of the face, with the rest more evanescent, allows us to suppose it probably is a portrait started in the presence of the model and finished from memory in 1959. This painting, that appeared in photos taken by Yanaihara in the studio, is neither dated nor signed, and does not appear to have been exhibited in the artist's lifetime.

No inscription

Annette GIACOMETTI
Succession Annette Giacometti
Fondation Giacometti

2006 Alberto Giacometti, Kamakura (Japan), The Museum of Modern Art, from June 3rd to July 30th 2006, no. III-7
2006 Alberto Giacometti, Kobe (Japan), Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, from August 8th to October 1st 2006, no. III-7
2006 Alberto Giacometti, Sakura (Japan), Kawamura Memorial Museum of Art, from October 10th to December 3rd 2006, no. III-7
2018 Alberto Giacometti Retrospective Québec, Quebec (Canada), Musée National des Beaux Arts du Québec, from February 8th to May 13th 2018
2018 Giacometti Retrospective Guggenheim New York, New York, NY (United States Of America), The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, from June 8th to September 12th 2018
2018 Giacometti Restrospective Bilbao, Bilbao (Spain), Guggenheim Museum, from October 19th 2018 to February 24th 2019
2019 Alberto Giacometti, D'après le modèle (Prague)., Prague (Czech Republic), Veletržní palác, from July 18th to December 1st 2019
2021 Alberto Giacometti. Une rétrospective. Le réel merveilleux., MONACO (Monaco), Grimaldi Forum Monaco, from July 3rd to August 29th 2021

Véronique WIESINGER, Toshio YAMANASHI (under the direction of), Alberto Giacometti, Tokyo : The Tokyo Shimbun, 2006, cat. no. III-7, p. 68, ill. p. 68