Femme debout (Standing Woman)

The Swiss-born and Paris-based artist Alberto Giacometti transformed post-World War II European sculpture by revolutionizing spatial perception and scale. The extreme fragility and thinness of the sculptures he made after the war express the anxiety and trauma of those years. They illustrate the artist’s fascination for the human body as well as his formal search for verticality and balance. The elongated, almost skeletal figure of his Femme debout (Standing Woman) seems to be bare of muscles and flesh, and yet is forcefully expressive at the same time.