Bust of Elie Lotar

Artist Herbert Matter (American, born Switzerland. Born April 25, 1907, Engelberg, Swit, 1907 - 1984)

DateNegative 1965; print 1978

MediumGelatin silver print

DimensionsSupport: 16 × 20 in. (40.6 × 50.8 cm)
Mat: 19 3/4 × 23 3/4 in. (50.2 × 60.3 cm)

ClassificationsPhotograph

Credit LineGift in Honor of Norman S. Ives, Professor, Artist, Publisher and Friend of Herbert Matter, 2021

Object number2022.9.12

DescriptionHorizontal page with image of sculpture of human head and shoulders. Highly modeled surface of shoulders shown as a substantial wedge shape at bottom of page. Frontal view of face positioned at left with articulated features.
eMuseum Notes

Emuseum Notes

As Giacometti’s health was failing, his last subject was Elie Lotar, an old friend who was a photographer and cinematographer associated, like Giacometti, with the Surrealist art movement in France. These final sculptures of Lotar show a vigorous hand and an awareness of mortality. Matter’s photograph of it leaves out the undifferentiated but heavily carved torso that further suggests the toll of time on the body. Instead, he focuses on the vitality of the head, not immune from the effects of age but displaying acuteness and the wisdom of his years. Giacometti continued to work on the clay form of this sculpture until about a month before his death in January 1966. His brother Diego made a posthumous plaster cast of it in preparation for the final bronze. Elie Lotar, the model, died a few years later in 1969.

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