Alberto Giacometti, Testa di ragazza con treccia, Ida

Photogallery

Alberto Giacometti, Testa di ragazza con treccia, Ida
Alberto Giacometti, Testa di ragazza con treccia, Ida
Room 6. Italian sculpture during the years 1920-1950

This head of a girl, so distant from the image that links Giacometti to slender spectral apparitions, is a splendid example of his early work.
The sculptor produced the piece around 1923, during one of his stays in Stampa, in Switzerland. He had moved to Paris the year before, but frequently returned to his home town, in the Val Bregaglia; this plaster work depicts Ida, the girl who helped Giacometti’s mother with the housework, whom the artist had asked to pose. Other plaster works date from his Parisian apprenticeship, marked by the contacts he made with the avant-garde environment. This work, which Giacometti initially gave as a gift to his uncle Zaccaria, was donated to Pope Paul VI by Msgr. Luigi Del Pietro following the artist’s death.