Fondation Giacometti

Isaku Yanaihara (1918-1989) was a professor of philosophy in Japan, a specialist of the work of Sartre, Genet and Camus, whose book “L’Etranger” he translated into Japanese. He met Alberto Giacometti in Paris in 1955, and regularly sat for the artist, in 1956 and then during his summer stays in France in 1957, 1959, 1960 and 1961. In several texts, amongst which an article published in the magazine “Derrière le miroir” in 1961, he described those long sittings, the artist and the model trying to mutually exhaust each other. The work on Yanaihara’s portrait enabled Giacometti to push to the limit his search for “copying a head exactly as one sees it”. The successive reframing drawn on the canvas accentuate the concentration of the gaze on the portrait and reduce the space around the model. The change of colour for the background makes that framing even more marked than in Giacometti’s other portraits, enclosing the model in a “window” that redefines the dimensions of the space and the artist’s point of view. This devise aims at resolving the question of the portrait’s size and the distance between the model and the artist during a sitting. This question was very important for Giacometti, for it questioned the very complex relation between the vision he had of his model and its representation on the canvas. The head is the most detailed part of the portrait, the one on which the colour, in its grey and ochre tones is more concentrated and dark. That concentration on the head was to be gradually accentuated in the Sixties, as Giacometti worked from Yanaihara, but also other models, among them Caroline. This painting is not signed or dated, and does not figure on the photographs taken by Yanaihara during the sittings.

No inscription

Annette GIACOMETTI
Succession Annette Giacometti
Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti

1965 Alberto Giacometti. Sculpture Paintings Drawings 1913 1965, London (United Kingdom), Tate Gallery, from July 17th to August 30th 1965, no. 137
1965 Alberto Giacometti, Humlebæk (Denmark), Louisiana Museum for Moderne Kunst, from September 18th to October 24th 1965, no. 126
1977 Alberto Giacometti. Plastiken. Gemälde. Zeichnungen, Duisburg (Germany), Wilhelm-Lehmbruck-Museum Duisburg, from September 17th to November 27th 1977, no. 74
2006 Alberto Giacometti, Kamakura (Japan), The Museum of Modern Art, from June 3rd to July 30th 2006, no. III-4
2006 Alberto Giacometti, Kobe (Japan), Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, from August 8th to October 1st 2006, no. III-4
2006 Alberto Giacometti, Sakura (Japan), Kawamura Memorial Museum of Art, from October 10th to December 3rd 2006, no. III-4
2007 L'atelier d'Alberto Giacometti, Paris (France), Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, from October 15th 2007 to February 11th 2008, no. 29
2008 En perspective, Giacometti, Caen (France), Musée des Beaux-Arts, from May 17th to August 31st 2008
2008 Isabel and Other Intimate Strangers. Portraits by Alberto Giacometti and Francis Bacon, New York, NY (United States Of America), Gagosian Gallery, from November 3rd to December 13th 2008
2010 Alberto Giacometti. Der Ursprung des Raumes, Wolfsbourg (Germany), Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, from November 20th 2010 to March 6th 2011, no. 27
2011 Alberto Giacometti. Der Ursprung des Raumes, Salzbourg (Austria), Museum der Moderne Mönchsberg, from March 26th to July 3rd 2011
2017 Rodin 1917 - 2017 : l'exposition du centenaire, Paris (France), Grand Palais, from March 20th to July 31st 2017
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
2023 Le temps de Giacometti., Toulouse (France), Les Abattoirs. Musée d'art moderne et contemporain-Frac Occitanie Toulouse, from September 22nd 2023 to January 21st 2024

Alberto GIACOMETTI, in Louisiana Revy, Humlebæk : Editions Louisiana, no. 1, september 1965, p. catalogue
Alberto Giacometti. Sculpture. Paintings. Drawings 1913 1965 (carton d'invitation), London : The Tate Gallery, 1965
Siegfried SALZMANN, Alberto Giacometti. Plastiken. Gemälde. Zeichnungen, Duisburg : Wilhelm-Lehmbruck-Museum, 1977, cat. no. 74, p. 227, ill. p. 184
Yves BONNEFOY, Alberto Giacometti. Biographie d'une oeuvre, Paris : Flammarion, 1991, cat. no. 435, ill. p. 452
Véronique WIESINGER, Toshio YAMANASHI (under the direction of), Alberto Giacometti, Tokyo : The Tokyo Shimbun, 2006, cat. no. III-4, p. 66, ill. p. 66
Véronique WIESINGER (under the direction of), L'atelier d'Alberto Giacometti, Paris : Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti, 2007 / Paris : Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, 2007, cat. no. 29, p. 196, 198, ill. p. 400
Véronique WIESINGER, En perspective, Giacometti, Lyon : Fage Editions, 2008, p. 132, ill. p. 124 & 132
Véronique WIESINGER, Valentina CASTELLANI, John GOOD, Andrea CRANE (under the direction of), Alberto Giacometti. Francis Bacon. Isabel and Other Intimate Strangers, New York, NY : Gagosian Gallery, 2008, p. 178-179 & 257, ill. p. 179 & 257
Markus BRUDERLIN, Toni STOOSS (under the direction of), Alberto Giacometti. Der Ursprung des Raumes, Ostfildern Ruit : Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2010 / Wolfsbourg : Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, 2010 / Salzbourg : Museum der Moderne Mönchsberg, 2010, p. 252, ill. p. 146
Markus BRUDERLIN, Toni STOOSS (under the direction of), Alberto Giacometti. The Origin of Space, Ostfildern Ruit : Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2010 / Wolfsburg : Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, 2010, p. 252, ill. p. 146
Yves BONNEFOY, Alberto Giacometti. Biographie d'une oeuvre, Paris : Flammarion, 2012, cat. no. 435, ill. p. 452