Giacometti sculpture poised to set auction record | Lifestyle.INQ

OCTOBER 27, 2022

A sculpture (R) by Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti entitled “Walking Man I”, at the auction house, in London. Credit Carl De Souza/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A sculpture (R) by Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti entitled “Walking Man I”, at the auction house, in London. Credit Carl De Souza/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A sculpture (R) by Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti entitled “Walking Man I”, at the auction house, in London. Carl De Souza/Agence France-Presse

 

 

 

NEW YORK — A rare life-size sculpture by Alberto Giacometti could set a record next month at auction where it’s estimated to bring $130 million.

 

“Pointing Man,” created in 1947, is being offered at Christie’s in New York on May 11.

 

The record for a sculpture at auction is $104.3 million for Giacometti’s “Walking Man I,” set in 2010. Last fall, the artist’s 1951 bronze sculpture, “Chariot,” fetched $101 million.

 

The 5-foot-high (1.5-meter-high) bronze sculpture of a spindly figure with his arms extended has been in the same private collection for 45 years.

 

Giacometti, who died in 1966, made six casts and an artist’s proof of the work. Four are in museum collections: London’s Tate Gallery, New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Des Moines Art Center and Baltimore Museum of Art. The others are in a foundation collection and private hands.

 

“‘Pointing Man’ is unquestionably Giacometti’s greatest sculpture,” Christie’s Global President Jussi Pylkkanen said.

 

Also on May 11, the auction house previously announced it would be selling Pablo Picasso’s “Women of Algiers (Version O)” for an estimated $140 million. The 1955 painting could eclipse the highest price ever paid for an artwork at auction — Francis Bacon’s triptych “Three Studies of Lucian Freud” fetched $142.4 million in 2013.

 

The Picasso and Giacometti will be offered with a group of some two dozen other blue chip works created between 1902 and the end of the 20th century in a stand-alone sale called “Looking Forward to the Past.” It will be held during the semiannual auctions of impressionist, modern and contemporary art.

 

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