Composition dite cubiste I

Composition dite cubiste I was conceived circa 1926-1927 and marks an important watershed in Alberto Giacometti's career. It is often from this period in the mid-1920s that writers date his artistic maturity. Now, he was beginning to develop an idiosyncratic style; this would evolve over the years, through his almost Cycladic works and then the Surreal-infused sculptures, eventually culminating in the elongated, existential figures of the post-war period. Composition dite cubiste I therefore dates from the moment that this journey truly began.

Giacometti had moved to Paris in the 1920s and often worked in the studio of Emile-Antoine Bourdelle. In 1926, when Giacometti began to create his more stylised, avant garde works, Bourdelle tolerated them, insisting however that he continue to create more traditional works. Giacometti studied under Bourdelle for several years and learnt a great deal, but they retained a respectful distance in terms of their styles. However, at around the time that Composition dite cubiste I was created, Giacometti came into the orbits of two other sculptors, both of whom had adapted Cubism to their own needs, Jacques Lipchitz and Henri Laurens. The latter in particular fostered a relationship with Giacometti that would continue over the years.

In Composition dite cubiste I, Giacometti appears to have created his own variation of Cubism, bending its visual language to his own purposes. The two main elements resemble two heads, indicating Giacometti's refusal to stray into the territories of abstraction. Instead, he retained a solid link to the world around him. Looking at the two main parts of Composition dite cubiste I, with one tilting in and down towards the other, the viewer is reminded of another sculpture from the same period, Le couple, hinting at the notion that they both present the same subject. In Composition dite cubiste I, though, Giacometti has eschewed the influence of tribal art so clearly present in Le couple. Instead, he has created a modern vision of form, echoing the Art Deco styles of the era while also paring back his subject matter to raw essentials. In this, Giacometti was showing his intense focus on the core of his subject; this would come to the fore all the more in the coming years, when he created works such as Femme of 1927 and Tête qui regarde of the following year, which are essentially monoliths in which the barest details have been added, almost as dents. Composition dite cubiste I anticipates these developments in its depiction of the heads as rectangles, the closer of the two with a vertical line which resembles a nose, as though the face were turned.