Alberto Giacometti

Venice Woman IV (Femme de Venise IV), 1956

Bronze
45 1/4 x 6 1/4 x 13 1/4 in. (114.9 x 15.9 x 33.7 cm.)

Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX

Venice Woman III and Venice Woman IV are part of a series of female figures made by Giacometti for exhibition at the 1956 Venice Biennale. He produced a total of nine Venice Women (and six additional standing female figures) between January and May 1956, all from the same supply of clay and the same wire armature. His brother Diego made a plaster cast of each successive figure before it was remade. Contained upon their narrow rectangular bases, the Venice Women rise stiffly from their oversized feet to their diminutive heads. The aggressive modeling of the thin, attenuated forms leaves a figure that seems eroded by space. Monumental and stolid despite their severe reduction, the figures also recall the ancient Egyptian and Cycladic figures that Giacometti so admired.

While in Paris on a Fulbright fellowship in 1964–65, Serra and his friend, the composer Philip Glass, would go regularly to the café La Coupole, waiting for a glimpse of Giacometti, who, according to Serra, “would turn up for a drink late at night with plaster in his hair.” Giacometti’s devotion to his art was a great inspiration to Serra, who considered him an “empowering” figure.

Exhibition:

January 28 - April 23, 2017

In conjunction with the exhibition Richard Serra: Prints the Nasher Sculpture Center’s curators have chosen works from the Nasher Collection that provide context for better understanding Serra’s work. The sculptures span decades, from the experiments of Pablo Picasso, Constantin Brancusi, and Henri Matisse in the first years of the twentieth century to works by Serra’s near-contemporaries Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, and Richard Long.