Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti (
October 10,
1901 –
January 11,
1966) was a Swiss
sculptor,
painter,
draftsman and
printmaker.
Early Years
Though born in Borgonovo in
Val Bregaglia,
Switzerland near the Italian border, Alberto Giacometti spent most of his childhood in the nearby town of Stampa,
Italy. His father was a Post-Impressionist who encouraged his son's interest in sculpture.
After finishing high school, Giacometti moved to
Geneva to attend the School of Fine Arts. In 1922 he moved to Paris to study at the
Académie de la Grande Chaumière in
Montparnasse under
Auguste Rodin's associate, the sculptor
Antoine Bourdelle. It was there that Giacometti experimented with the
cubist method. In 1927 his brother, Diego Giacometti, joined him as his assistant. Drawn to the
surrealist movement, Alberto displayed his first surrealist sculptures at Salon des Tuileries, Paris, later that year. Before long, he was regarded as one of the leading surrealist sculptors of the day.
|
Three Men Walking II, 1949 |
Living in the creative community of
Montparnasse, he associated with artists
Joan Miró,
Max Ernst,
Pablo Picasso and
Balthus, plus writers
Samuel Beckett,
Jean-Paul Sartre,
Paul Eluard and
André Breton, and wrote and drew for Breton's magazine
Le Surréalisme au Service de la Révolution.
From 1935 to 1940 Giacometti concentrated his sculpting on the human head, focusing on the model's gaze, followed by a unique artistic phase in which his statues became stretched out — their limbs elongated.
During
World War II, he lived in the safety of Geneva where he met Annette Arm. In 1946 he and Arm returned to Paris where in 1949 they married. Giacometti's most productive period followed the marriage. His wife provided him with the opportunity to constantly to be in touch with another human body, particularly a feminine one. Models who had posed for him found it a difficult job, but Arm patiently sat for him for hours until he achieved what he wanted.
He soon had an exhibition of his works at the Gallery Maeght in Paris and at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in
New York City for which his friend,
Jean-Paul Sartre, wrote the catalogue's preface.
By the early 1950s, the use of bronze had become affordable (metals were in short supply during World War II) and Giacometti began to cast his works in
bronze with the help of his brother Diego, who posed for the artist and worked as his assistant until Giacometti's death.
Obsessed with creating his sculptures exactly as he envisioned through his unique view of reality, he often carved until they were as thin as nails and reduced to the size of a pack of cigarettes, much to his consternation. A friend of his once said that if Giacometti decided to sculpt you,
he would make your head look like the blade of a knife. After his marriage his tiny sculptures became larger, but the larger they grew, the thinner they became. Giacometti said that the final result represented the sensation he felt when he looked at a naked woman.
Commissioned to design a medallion depicting
Henri Matisse in 1954, he created numerous masterful drawings of the great painter in the last months of Matisse's life. His portraiture of the 1950s shows a greater emphasis on recognizable likeness.
Later Years
|
Poster by Alberto Giacometti |
In 1962, he was awarded the grand prize for sculpture at the
Venice Biennale, and the award brought with it worldwide celebrity. Even when he had achieved popularity and his works were in demand, he still reworked models, often destroying them or setting them aside to be returned to years later.
The prints produced by Giacometti are often overlooked but the catalogue raisonné
Giacometti - The Complete Graphics and 15 Drawings by Herbert Lust (Tudor 1970) comments on their impact and gives details of the number of copies of each print. Some of his most important images were in editions of only 30 and many were described as rare in 1970.
In his later years, Giacometti's works were shown in a number of large exhibitions throughout Europe. Riding a wave of international popularity, and despite his declining health, he traveled to the
United States in 1965 for an exhibition of his works at the
New York Museum of Modern Art.
As his last work he prepared the text for the book
Paris sans fin, a sequence of 150 lithographs containing memories of all the places where he had lived.
Alberto Giacometti died in 1966 of heart disease and chronic bronchitis at the Kantonsspital in
Chur, Switzerland. His body was returned to his birthplace in Borgonovo, where he was interred close to his parents. He is featured on the one hundred Swiss Franks banknote.
Giacometti was a key player in the
Existentialist movement, but his work resists easy categorization. Some describe it as
Formalist, others argue it is
Expressionist or otherwise having to do with what
Deleuze calls 'blocs of sensation' (as in Deleuze's analysis of
Francis Bacon). Even after his excommunication from the
Surrealist group, while the intention of his sculpting was usually imitation, the end products were an expression of his emotional response to the subject. He attempted to create renditions of his models the way he saw them, and the way he thought they ought to be seen.
"All the sculptures of today, like those of the past, will end one day in pieces... So it is important to fashion ones work carefully in its smallest recess and charge every particle of matter with life."
Giacometti Sculptures, Tudor Publishing, NY, 1964
In 2001 he was included in the
Painting the Century 101 Portrait Masterpieces 1900-2000 exhibition held at the
National Portrait Gallery, London.
Before 2005, a sculpture by Giacometti sold for as much as
$14 million.
Sculptures
*
Spoon Woman - (1926)
*
Gazing Head - (1928)
*
The Cage - (1930)
*
Caress (Despite Hands) - (1932)
*
Woman with Her Throat Cut - (1932)
*
The Palace at 4 A.M. - (1932)
*
The Surrealist Table - (1933)
*
Invisible Object (Hands Holding the Void) - (1935)
*
Nose - (1947)
*
Man Walking - (1947)
*
The Chariot - (1950)
*
Le Chien - (1951)
*
Head of Diego on Base - (1953)
*
Bust of Diego - (
1954)
*
Grande femme IV - (1960)
*
Tall Figure II and Tall Figure III - (1960)
*
Man Pointing - (1947)
Paintings and drawings
* Self-Portrait - (
1921)
*
The Couple - (1926)
*
The Artist's Mother - (
1937)
*
Apple on the Sideboard - (1937)
*
Stehende Figur - (1947)
*
The Street - (1952)
*
Landscape at Stampa - (1952)
*
Diego in a Plaid Shirt - (1954)
*
Rue D'alesia - (1954)
*
Annette in the Studio - (1954)
*
Eternal Gaze A 2003 animated short film by Sam Chen in memory of Giacometti.
*
The Museum of Modern Art 2001-2002 Giacometti exhibition. (Requires Flash.)
*
Virtual Gallery*
Giacometti's sculptures in the Web Gallery Private Art Collection*
"Eternal Gaze" Short Film
