Giacometti cast this bronze sculpture around 1951, based on a plaster he had modeled a year or two before. The figure is the artist’s brother, Diego, who wears a turtleneck sweater. This sculpture is among the earliest of the series of male heads and busts that the artist created during the 1950s, which are, in the words of Giacometti’s cataloguer Yves Bonnefoy, “as famous as they are beautiful.” Giacometti frequently used Diego as a model, regarding his next-of-kin as a kind of reflection of himself. In
this way, rendering Diego in both paint and bronze allowed the artist to create a self-portrait while looking at another person. Giacometti regarded each sitting as a moment of meeting his brother anew, saying, “When he poses for me, I don’t recognize him.” In the presence of someone who is, as it were, “his double,” Giacometti “more than ever is witness to the mystery of existence, like Hamlet thinking of Yorick."
Diego sat for Giacometti thousands of times over the course of the 1950s for the creation of the bronze busts. 'Tête de Diego au col roulé' (c. 1951) was cast at Pastori Fondeur in Paris and is unique; no other known casts of the work exist. It is also exceptional in that it is painted in a creamy flesh tone, which highlights the cuts, crevices and ridges of the sculptor's roughly energetic modeling. Giacometti had long appreciated the fact that heads and figures sculpted in antiquity and in Europe during the medieval period were painted in bright colors to convey a realistic effect.
