Femme Debout I (Standing Woman I)

Alberto Giacometti

1960

Bronze

J. Paul Getty Museum

Nearly nine feet tall, this larger-than-life, extremely slender figure towers over the viewer. Despite her emaciated frame, she commands the surrounding space. Her rail-thin arms appear almost fused to her torso, heightening a palpable sense of empty space around the figure. The relatively large base emphasizes her fragility. The deeply kneaded, distressed bronze surface suggests a morbid, decomposing form. Alberto Giacometti began creating isolated, skeletal female and male figures in the wake of World War II. At first working on a small scale, he soon began to produce much taller forms like this one. Giacometti conceived this scul