Alberto Giacometti
Portrait of Isaku Yanaihara1956

On view:

Broad Contemporary Art Museum, floor 3

Artist or Maker: Alberto Giacometti
Title: Portrait of Isaku Yanaihara
Place Made: Switzerland
Date Made: 1956
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 32 × 25 1/2 in. (81.28 × 64.77 cm)
Credit Line: Partial, fractional and promised gift of Janice and Henri Lazarof
Accession Number: M.2005.70.30
Classification: Paintings
Collecting Area: Modern Art
Curatorial Notes: Between 1956 and 1961, Giacometti made over a dozen oil portraits and one sculpture of Japanese philosopher Isaku Yanaihara. Yanaihara interviewed Giacometti for a Japanese magazine in 1955, instigating a long friendship based on their shared interest in existentialist philosophy. The second in the group, this painting features the seated figure suffused in glowing electric light. It is less a physical portrait and more an apparition; as Giacometti said, “I am not attempting likeness, but resemblance.”

Wall label, 2021.
Provenance: The artist (1901-1966). [Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York]; Pierre Matisse (1900-1989), New York; [Marc Blondeau, S.A., Paris]; François Pinault (1936-), Paris; [Galerie Beyeler, Basel]; sold to Janice and Henri Lazarof, Los Angeles; given in 2005 to LACMA.
Selected Bibliography: Barron, Stephanie. Envisioning Modernism: The Janice and Henri Lazarof Collection. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Munich; New York: DelMonico Books-Prestel, 2012.