Alberto Giacometti (1901–66) was a Swiss sculptor, painter, and draughtsman best known for his stick-like elongated figural sculptures of solitary figures.
Born in Borgonovo, then part of the Stampa municipality, Giacometti was the son of the postimpressionist painter Giovanni Giacometti. Alberto studied at Geneva and worked mainly in Paris, initially under the French sculptor Antoine Bourdelle.
Giacometti joined the Surrealists in 1930, producing many abstract constructions of a symbolic kind, arriving finally at the characteristic “thin man” bronzes. These dream-like figures, built of plaster on a wire base, were long spidery statuettes rigid in posture yet trembling on the verge of movement, suggesting transience, change, and decay, such as Man Pointing (1947.)
Giacometti’s work has been compared to phenomenological thought of the emergent existentialist movement in Paris. He associated himself with the period’s prominent personalities, such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Samuel Beckett.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Alberto Giacometti
In every work of art the subject is primordial, whether the artist knows it or not. The measure of the formal qualities is only a sign of the measure of the artist’s obsession with his subject; the form is always in proportion to the obsession.
—Alberto Giacometti
That’s the terrible thing: the more one works on a picture, the more impossible it becomes to finish it.
—Alberto Giacometti
Basically, I no longer work for anything but the sensation I have while working.
—Alberto Giacometti
The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.
—Alberto Giacometti
Topics: Art
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Auguste Rodin French Sculptor
Hermann Hesse Swiss Novelist, Poet
Carl Gustav Jung Swiss Psychologist
Henri Frederic Amiel Swiss Philosopher, Writer
Jean-Jacques Rousseau French Philosopher
Johann Kaspar Lavater Swiss Theologian, Poet
Jean Antoine Petit-Senn Swiss Poet
Karl Barth Swiss Protestant Theologian
Jean-luc Godard French-born Swiss Film Director
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi Swiss Educator