Hands Holding a Void

Alberto Giacometti

1934

An engraving in which Giacometti renders a thin, seated figure whose delicate, linear hands cup an empty space—a study in presence defined by absence.

What strikes you first are the spare, finely incised lines and the tall, angular chair that make the mask‑like figure seem fragile and schematic, with a pear‑shaped void in the torso and hands held around emptiness against a softly smudged ground.

The print translates Giacometti’s Surrealist and sculptural preoccupations with loneliness and negative space into two dimensions, anticipating the attenuated human forms and existential concerns that shaped postwar modernism.

Palette

Art Terms

Print Surrealism Figurative Figure/ground relationship Intaglio Avant-garde Engraving

Exhibitions

Alberto Giacometti

1965

Thirty Sculptors' Drawings

1979

Sculptors' Drawings

1933

The Museum Collection of Sculpture

1946