Bust of Annette IV
- Artist: Alberto Giacometti
- Date: 1962, cast 1965
- Medium: Bronze
- Dimensions: object: 578 x 236 x 218 mm, 13 kg
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is the “Bust of Annette IV” by Alberto Giacometti. It’s one of eight bronze heads he made of his wife between 1962 and 1965, and this particular cast came out in 1965 with help from the Friends of the Tate. Giacometti kept pushing the surface, almost sanding it into that gritty, almost “unfinished” look that’s become his signature. He once joked that after three days of working on her face she “doesn’t resemble herself anymore,” and you can see that tension in the eyes and the slightly exaggerated proportions. The piece sits in the Tank area of the Tate Modern, on Level 0. It’s a small, 23‑centimetre-high portrait, but the texture and the way the light catches the bronze makes it feel larger than life. It’s a neat window into Giacometti’s obsession with the human figure and the fleeting nature of a moment captured in metal.
See it in person
Bust of Annette IV is in the collection of Tate Modern on Bankside, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
