---
title: "Alberto Giacometti: results at LLB Auction"
source: LLB Auction
canonical: https://www.llb-auction.com/artists/alberto-giacometti
currency: EUR
price_basis: hammer, excluding buyer's premium and VAT
scope: results at this auction house only
---

# Alberto Giacometti

| Fact | Value |
|---|---|
| Born | 1901 |
| Died | 1966 |
| Nationality | Swiss |
| Movements | Surrealism |
| Lots offered at LLB Auction | 1 |
| Lots sold | 0 |
| Range of prices realised | — |
| Median price realised | — |

## Lots

| Work | Medium | Sale | Date | Estimate | Hammer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LOT 04. Seated Nude (Lust 53) | Lithograph | Contemporary Art - December 2025 | 23 December 2025 | €3,000 to €6,000 | Not sold |

## About Alberto Giacometti

### Life and work

Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor, painter and printmaker, born in 1901 in the Val Bregaglia in eastern Switzerland and active for most of his career in Paris, where he settled as a young artist and remained until his death in 1966. He grew up in a family of painters and trained first in Geneva before moving to France, where he joined the circles around Surrealism in the late 1920s and 1930s. After the Second World War he broke from Surrealist imagery and developed the extremely thin, elongated standing and walking figures that define his mature work. Those figures, cast in bronze from clay and plaster models built up and scraped down in his small Paris studio, remain the works for which he is best known, alongside portrait busts of his brother Diego and his wife Annette, and a smaller body of paintings and works on paper made from posed sittings.

### Disciplines and how they differ in the saleroom

Giacometti worked across several disciplines that the market treats quite differently. His bronze sculptures, cast in small numbered editions from plaster or clay originals, carry the highest prices and dominate evening sales at the major international houses. His paintings and drawings, mostly built from repeated sittings by family members and friends, form a separate and smaller market. He also produced a handful of decorative objects, lamps and a unique chandelier among them, made for private patrons rather than for exhibition, which now surface only rarely and draw strong interest precisely because so few exist. Prints and lithographs, produced in larger runs, sell for a fraction of the unique sculptures and paintings. LLB Auction has offered one work by the artist to date, which did not find a buyer, a reminder that even a well known name does not guarantee a sale and that presentation and estimate matter as much as attribution.

### What a specialist examines

Because Giacometti's bronzes exist in numbered editions cast over several decades, and in some cases after his death, a specialist starts with the base of the sculpture, where a foundry mark, edition number and sometimes a signature are stamped or incised. Establishing whether a cast was made during the artist's lifetime or afterward, and by which foundry, is central to both authenticity and value. Provenance is checked back through the collections and dealers a work has passed through, since Giacometti's estate has been closely documented since his death. Exhibition history matters too, since many sculptures were shown at the retrospectives and Biennales that shaped his reputation while he was alive. Condition points specific to the medium include the stability of surface patina on bronzes, and for the rare plasters and decorative pieces, old repairs and past handling. Paintings and drawings are checked for the artist's characteristic reworked, scratched surface, and for later retouching. Any archive or database number attached to a work, and the body listed under Career that examines Giacometti's output, are part of the same paper trail a buyer should expect to see before bidding.

### Market position

Giacometti's sculptures anchor the top end of Impressionist and Modern evening sales. His painted bronze L'Homme au doigt sold for $141,285,000 at Christie's in 2015, the current auction record for a Giacometti sculpture. Le Nez brought $78,400,000 at Sotheby's in 2021, and Trois hommes qui marchent (grand plateau) sold for $30,100,000 at Sotheby's in 2022. Femme Leoni made $28,400,000 at Sotheby's in 2023, and a bronze bust of his brother Diego made $13,200,000 at Sotheby's in 2024. These results, spanning almost a decade, show a market that stays active across a wide range of prices for different subjects, sizes and cast dates, with the largest, earliest conceived standing and walking figures commanding the biggest sums.

### Preparing a valuation request

A seller should gather any invoice, gallery or auction paperwork and correspondence that traces the work back toward the artist or his estate. Clear photographs of the whole piece, the base or verso where marks and numbers appear, and any label or stamp help a specialist form a first opinion before a work is seen in person. Exact measurements, medium and, for a bronze, the foundry name if it is legible are useful from the outset. Any certificate, archive number or exhibition catalogue entry connected to the piece should be gathered alongside a recent condition report noting patina, repairs or damage. A record of past exhibitions or publications, even a photograph of the work hanging in a private home, can support the provenance a buyer will expect to see.

## Market at LLB Auction

| Figure | Value |
|---|---|
| Sell-through | 0% |
| Lots above high estimate | 0 |

### Prices by medium

| Medium | Offered | Sold | Lowest hammer | Median hammer | Highest hammer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lithograph | 1 | 0 | — | — | — |

### Year by year

| Year | Offered | Sold | Total hammer |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 1 | 0 | €0 |

## Public auction records

Results published by other auction houses, cited from the linked sources. Not results of LLB Auction.

| House | Date | Work | Price (basis) | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Phillips | 14 November 2019 | Portrait of G. David Thompson (1957) | US$4,220,000 (premium) | https://www.phillips.com/detail/alberto-giacometti/NY010719/6 |
| Phillips | 5 June 2024 | Figure floor lamp | US$381,000 (premium) | https://www.phillips.com/detail/alberto-giacometti/NY050124/25 |
| Sotheby's | 15 November 2021 | Le Nez | US$78,300,000 (premium) | https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2021/11/16/sothebys-macklowe-auction-646m-record |
| Sotheby's | 18 November 2024 | Buste (Tête tranchante) (Diego) (1953) | US$13,200,000 (premium) | https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2024/11/19/sothebys-new-york-white-glove-auction-sydell-miller-collection-modern-evening-sale |
| Sotheby's | 16 May 2023 | Femme Leoni (1947) | US$28,400,000 (premium) | https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/05/17/sothebys-modern-art-sales-new-york-mo-ostin-klimt-magritte |
| Sotheby's | 14 November 2022 | Trois hommes qui marchent (grand plateau) (1952) | US$30,100,000 (premium) | https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/11/15/record-breaking-mondrian-sothebys-new-york-mixed-results-david-solinger-auction-new-york |
| Sotheby's | 15 November 2021 | Le Nez (1947) | US$78,400,000 (premium) | https://www.sothebys.com/en/press/new-york-white-glove-result-for-the-macklowe-collection-november-2021 |
| Christie's | 11 May 2015 | L'Homme au doigt (1947) | US$141,285,000 (premium) | https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/culture/giacometti-sculpture-breaks-world-record/41425384 |

## Career

### Cautions

- Giacometti made only six bronze casts of L'Homme au doigt plus one artist's proof, and only one of those casts was hand painted by the artist, so a cast number and its painted or unpainted surface change value within the same edition. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Homme_au_doigt)
- In 2007 a French court convicted Roland Dumas, executor of Annette Giacometti's estate, of illegally selling Giacometti works, with damages ordered to the Fondation, so provenance for pieces that moved through the estate in that period deserves close checking. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Giacometti)
- Bronze casts made during Giacometti's lifetime trade well above later or posthumous casts of the same composition, a gap illustrated when a lifetime cast of L'Homme qui marche I sold for a record price while a posthumous cast of a related standing figure sold for a small fraction of that sum. (https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2011/11/01/paris-foundation-loses-battle-to-cast-bronzes-from-original-giacometti-plasters)
- A large counterfeiting operation producing fake Giacometti bronzes and plasters was uncovered in Germany, with more than one thousand suspect works seized from a warehouse and further pieces recovered elsewhere before convictions followed. (https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2010/02/01/giacometti-fakes-seized-in-alleged-counterfeiting-ring-in-germany)

### Exhibitions

| Exhibition | Venue | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Alberto Giacometti | Museum of Modern Art, New York | 1965 |
| L'Atelier d'Alberto Giacometti | Centre Pompidou, Paris | 2007 |
| Annette dal vero (Annette from Life), Swiss Pavilion | Venice Biennale | 1962 |
| Pure Presence | National Portrait Gallery, London | 2015 |
| Alberto Giacometti | Tate Modern, London | 2017 |
| Alberto Giacometti, opening presentation, Chipperfield Building | Kunsthaus Zurich | 2026 |
| Encounters: Giacometti | Barbican Centre, London, in collaboration with Fondation Giacometti | 2025 |
| Alberto Giacometti, A Retrospective | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao | 2018 |
| Giacometti | Tate Modern, London | 2017 |
| Alberto Giacometti retrospective | Museum of Modern Art, New York | 1965 |
| 31st Venice Biennale, Grand Prize for Sculpture | Venice Biennale | 1962 |
| Exhibition of Sculptures, Paintings, Drawings | Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York | 1948 |

### Authentication bodies

- Fondation Giacometti, Giacometti Committee (https://www.fondation-giacometti.fr/en/authentication-committee): Delivers certificates of authenticity or expert opinions for submitted paintings, sculptures, drawings and decorative art objects, oversees restorations, and has no authority over works by Diego Giacometti.
- Fondation Giacometti authentication committee (https://www.fondation-giacometti.fr/en/authentication-committee): Examines works by Alberto Giacometti submitted to it and delivers certificates of authenticity or expert opinions, as stated on its own page.

### Catalogue raisonné

- Alberto Giacometti Database (AGD), Fondation Giacometti: https://www.fondation-giacometti.fr/en/alberto-giacometti-database-agd

## Comparables

Related artists: Francis Bacon, Louise Bourgeois, Salvador Dalí

## In museum collections

| Work | Year | Museum |
|---|---|---|
| Walking Woman I | — | Tate |
| La mère de l'artiste | — | Centre Pompidou |

## Sources

- LLB Auction catalogue (Proprietary)
- Wikidata contributors (CC0): https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q157194
- Wikipedia contributors (CC BY-SA 4.0): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Giacometti
- Phillips (all rights reserved, cited under quotation): https://www.phillips.com/detail/alberto-giacometti/NY010719/6
- The Art Newspaper (all rights reserved, cited under quotation): https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2021/11/16/sothebys-macklowe-auction-646m-record
- Tate (all rights reserved, cited under quotation): https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/giacometti-man-pointing-n05939
- Fondation Giacometti (all rights reserved, cited under quotation): https://www.fondation-giacometti.fr/en/authentication-committee
- Kunsthaus Zurich (all rights reserved, cited under quotation): https://www.kunsthaus.ch/en/sammlung/private-sammlungen/alberto-giacometti-stiftung/
- Emmy Andriesse (Public domain): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Emmy_Andriesse_-_Alberto_Giacometti_(Ende_1940er_PK-F-A.06801)_cut.jpg
- The Art Newspaper (all rights reserved, cited under quotation): https://www.theartnewspaper.com
- Sotheby's (all rights reserved, cited under quotation): https://www.sothebys.com
- Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SWI swissinfo.ch (all rights reserved, cited under quotation): https://www.swissinfo.ch
- Tate (all rights reserved, cited under quotation): https://www.tate.org.uk
- Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti (all rights reserved, cited under quotation): https://www.fondation-giacometti.fr
- Centre Pompidou (all rights reserved, cited under quotation): https://www.centrepompidou.fr

## Valuations
Request a free valuation: https://www.llb-auction.com/sell