Tall figure, 1949

Alberto Giacometti

Annika Gunnarsson: If you step outside at noon on a winter’s day and position yourself directly under the sun, your shadow will be as long and stretched out as Alberto Giacometti’s Tall Figure.

If you bring along a camera, you can photograph your shadow as it falls on the ground in front of you. If you then cut out the shadow from the photograph and stand it upright, well – then you will have a figure that has about the same dimensions as Alberto Giacometti’s bronze sculpture.

Now look at the heavy feet of the sculpture. The slender body and the small head. The body looks almost emaciated.

At a time when the horrors of the Second World War cast a deep shadow over the West, Alberto Giacometti struggled to depict reality as it appeared to him.

Alberto Giacometti once said: “Surrealism allowed me to push beyond the limits of traditional sculpture, to enter a realm where the line between dreams and reality blurs.”

By allowing the shadow – (you know) the one cast by the figure that prevents the light from reaching the surface behind it – to become part of the work, Alberto Giacometti drew a body in three dimensions. A body that radiates rebellion in all its stripped-down simplicity.