Alberto Giacometti, Woman with her Throat Cut, 1932

• Part woman, part crustacean, and part insect, Woman with Her Throat Cut is rigorously horizontal. Intended by the artist to be placed on the floor without a base, it suggests the violent image of a woman raped and murdered.
• Giacometti originally intended Woman with Her Throat Cut to rest directly on the floor, part of the "real" world, distanced from the lofty realm of art. A hybrid animal, insect, and human, the female figure's body appears to be simultaneously in the throes of sexual ecstasy and in the spasms of death—embodying the phrase petite mort (little death), a French term for orgasm
• The sexual drama and violence in this work is a powerfully discomfiting example of the misogynistic imagery frequently present in Surrealism.
• Sculpture


  • Part female, part insect
  • Fragile legs splayed
  • Torso appears torn open to reveal the curvature of her abdomen
  • Tiny breasts between twig-like arms enable us to identify her sex
  • Spoon-shaped hands anchor her helplessly to the floor
  • Arched and extended trachea
  • Tiny head
  • Open mouth that belies her silence
  • Anonymous and without voice
  • Battered surface
  • Convulses in the throes of death and suffering
• Displayed

  Typically displayed on the floor without a plinth
• We look down on the work

  Invitation to walk over the hybrid figure
• This work could be understood as representing a hideously misogynistic depiction of the female nude, but this reading may be too simplistic. Her torment is unnerving enough to subvert the voyeurism attached to the history of the nude.
• Style

  Surrealist. She/it is a Surrealist representation of some hybrid creature in metamorphosis (recurring Surrealist theme).
• Composition

  a complex and open asymmetrical composition; lack of plinth adds to sense of openness and helps break down the boundary between the work and the viewer; disjointed arrangement of forms; horizontal emphasis in composition.
• Abstracted form of human body

  Non-naturalistic; some identifiable forms: legs, spine, breasts but no longer human; unmistakably female: breasts, curve of stomach and splayed legs; appears fragmented, stripped down, skeletal; slender bending and curving forms suggest legs
• Identifiable forms

  • Torso
  • Spine
  • Neck
  • Legs
  • Appendages
• Appendages


  Appear like arms but terminate in massive objects that are useless as hands; one cupped as if it ought to hold something; spindly and jagged forms suggest claws and non-human ‘legs’
• Contrasting forms

  Concave and convex forms in contrast; angular and curved forms in contrast
• Form


  Reminiscent of insect; suggests biomorphic forms (shell, leaf, pod)
• Line


  sense of line extending through many forms, outlines are strongly expressed; composition and forms suggest movement and twisting. Ribcage on the ground appears jagged and cut open; aggressive, barbed, threatening, uninviting.
• Interpretation

  The sense of movement in ''Woman With Her Throat Cut'' has something to do with metamorphosis. Part of what is being transformed is the history of art. This is definitely not the pastoral, refined, reclining woman of Titian, Giorgione, David or Ingres. It is the reclining woman after Manet's ''Olympia,'' the prostitute offering herself with a sassiness new to art. In the Giacometti, the invitation is still being tended and it has already been taken. Either way, it means danger.
• Giacometti context

  Giacometti was introduced to the Surrealists and met too with their influences, namely, the theories of psychoanalyst, Freud. The Surrealist group were led by André Breton and Freud’s ideas have been described as lending validation to their beliefs. Freud theorised about the Oedipus Complex, Penis Envy, Madonna/Whore complex of Castration Phobia to name a few. Most artists focused on Freud’s ideas of an individual’s need to confront and even embrace desires/fears/fetishes/taboos to prevent people from malfunctioning.
• Giacometti context

  It has been said that Giacometti had an inner hatred of women which grew from a dysfunctional relationship with his mother growing up. The artist was also both sterile and impotent. Freud’s confrontation of his issues gave him solace and he could share his feelings with others.
• High-tensile strength of bronze

  • Allows for twisted and contorted forms of the body
  • Allows for thin, fragile forms that are convincingly ‘broken’
  • Allows for juxtaposition of rigidity of angular legs and smooth, open, curves
• Left leg supported on thin foot


  Self-supporting
• Casting technique using lost wax method

  • Allows for detail e.g. vertebrae in neck
• Modelled in wet plaster and heavily scored

  • Evident in vertebrae and large open form
• Smoothness of bronze

  Enhances curve of breasts, arch of back and hollow of open ‘hand’
• Light-reflective surface


  Makes it appear less human
• Single colour of medium

  Unifies disjointed forms
• Pieces appear to have cast separately and assembled (evident in joint of ‘hand’)
• Patina of bronze accentuates arch of back and contortion of limbs
• Choice of metal as medium and dark colour of bronze seem appropriate to violence of subject
• Bronze used in opposition to tradition of material for heroic subjects


  Traditional sculptural materials/techniques are used for this relatively untraditional representation which denies mass in favour of a linear portrayal
• Influences

  Giacometti moved to Paris and became influenced by Picasso and Cubism in dissecting abstracted forms and playing with positive and negative space. Not least the treatment of the female figure as a femme fatale