- Title
- Monumental Head
- Date Made
- 1960
- Medium
- Bronze, cast number 5/6
- Dimensions
- 38 x 12 x 13 in. (96.52 x 30.48 x 33.02 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2005.70.34
- Collecting Area
- Modern Art
- Curatorial Notes
Monumental Head was conceived as part of a commission Giacometti received in 1956 to create a group of three figures for the plaza in front of Chase Manhattan Bank in New York City. The oversized head with elongated neck was meant to be installed directly on the outdoor plaza, so that viewers could engage with it more directly.
The artist was influenced by the colossal head of Emperor Constantine (c. AD 330), which he saw in Rome shortly before casting this work; Monumental Head shares a similar frontal composition and enormous eyes, emphasized with deep, gouged sockets and furrowed brows. Giacometti claimed that this representation of the eyes, at once abstract and accentuated, conveyed the gaze most effectively. Like other body fragment sculptures, such as The Leg (1958), Monumental Head reflects Giacometti’s sustained interest in partial figures.
Wall label, 2021.
- Provenance
[Galerie Beyeler, Basel, sold 1997 to]; Janice and Henri Lazarof, Los Angeles, partial, fractional and promised gift 2005 to; LACMA.
- Selected Bibliography
- Barron, Stephanie. Acknowledgments, or Every Label Tells a Story. Los Angeles: Art Catalogues: LACMA, 2017.
