Tall Figure II, 1960

Confronting the gravities of fascism and the dawn of the Second World War, Giacometti first began to render figurative representations of the human body in late 1934. After decades of working in a more abstract mode, the artist sought new ways of understanding and visually translating contemporary horrors—especially as details of the Holocaust publicly emerged—by returning the human figure to the center of his work. Giacometti stated that the extreme verticality of his
sculpted figures was an unconscious rendering that denotes torture, as well as his fascination with the Egyptian god of rebirth, Osiris, who is traditionally depicted standing. Tall Figure II and Tall Figure III manifest both themes: The sculptures’ charred, emaciated bodies symbolize violence, trauma, and death while simultaneously representing rebirth, as their towering heights and rigid limbs echo the erect stature of the resurrected Egyptian god.