L'Homme qui marche I

banknote The bronze sculpture depicts a lone man in mid-stride with his arms hanging at his side. The piece is described as "both a humble image of an ordinary man, and a potent symbol of humanity". Giacometti is said to have viewed "the natural equilibrium of the stride" as a symbol of "man's own life force". In 1960, Giacometti was asked to be part of a public project by the Chase Manhattan Plaza in New York to plant bronze figures outside the building. The piece is considered to be one of the most important works by the artist and one of the most iconic images of Modern art. Edition number one of the sculpture is located at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. ==Auction==

On 3 February 2010, edition number two of the sculpture came up for auction at Sotheby's auction house in London. The sale of the sculpture marked the first time in 20 years that a life-size Giacometti figure of a walking man came to auction. Including the buyer's premium the price reached £65 million (US$103.7 million, $ million in ). The piece broke the record for a Giacometti work at auction, which was set at $27.5 million by Grande Femme Debout II in 2008, and that for the most expensive sculpture sold at a public auction, which was held by the 5000-year-old Guennol Lioness, sold at Sotheby's in 2007 for $57.2 m. When expressed in British pounds and when inflation is ignored, the bronze also broke the record price for an art work sold at auction which, since 2004, was held at $104.2 million (then £58.2 m) by Pablo Picasso's Garçon à la pipe. The most expensive work of art sold at a public auction remained Van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet, which was bought in May 1990 for $82.5 million (approx. $138.4 million in CPI-adjusted 2010 US dollars), while Jackson Pollock's No. 5, 1948, which was privately sold for $140 million in 2006 (approx. $151 million in 2010 dollars), remained the most expensive work of art sold overall. ==See also==