Alberto Giacometti
The sculptor of slender figures.
Alberto Giacometti made long, thin bronze figures that seem to hover on the verge of vanishing. They have become symbols of existentialism.
Alberto Giacometti was born in 1901 in Borgonovo in the Bregaglia valley in the Swiss canton of Graubünden. His father, Giovanni Giacometti, was a well-known Post-Impressionist painter, and Alberto was already drawing and modelling as a child. He studied in Geneva and in 1922 moved to Paris, where he attended Antoine Bourdelle's classes. His brother Diego came with him and became his assistant and model for the rest of his life.
Around 1930 he joined the Surrealist circle and made enigmatic sculptures such as Suspended Ball and The Palace at 4 a.m. of 1932, in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. But in 1935 he returned to working from the live model, and he was then expelled from the Surrealist group. He found it almost impossible to depict a person as he truly saw them. During the war years in Geneva his figures became so small that they fitted into a matchbox.
After 1947 came the breakthrough with the long, thin figures with their rough, lumpy surface. They stand still or stride forward, often on large feet, and seem almost to dissolve into space. Famous works include Man Pointing of 1947 and Walking Man I of 1960. Both have sold at auction for record sums. He also painted and drew portraits with many searching lines, often of Diego and of his wife Annette, whom he married in 1949.
Giacometti worked in a small, cluttered studio in Montparnasse in Paris, where he lived in simple conditions even after he had become rich and famous. The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote about him, and his figures came to be seen as images of human isolation after the war and were linked to existentialism. In 1962 he won the sculpture prize at the Venice Biennale.
He died in 1966 in Chur, Switzerland. His portrait appears on the Swiss hundred-franc note. Giacometti is regarded as one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century, and his gaunt figures have become one of the most recognisable images of modern humanity.