Alberto Giacometti 1901 - 1966

Swiss sculptor, painter, printmaker. Father Giovanni (1868-1933) and 2nd cousin Augusto (1877-1947) were painters. Giacometti studied at the Geneva School of Arts and Crafts (1919) and under Bourdelle in Paris (1922-25) where (apart from the war years) he thereafter lived. Giacometti’s early works, e.g. Two Figures (1926), have an elemental, primitive force; later, more Surrealist constructions like The Palace at 4am (1933) already have the attenuation which increasingly became the feature of the human figures he produced from c.1940. The frailty of these strange, desolate matchstick-men (e.g. the group City Square, 1949) is emphasized by the heavy bases on which they are usually placed; the spatial relationships created, quite different from the monumental quality of traditional sculpture, have had great influence on contemporary work. Giacometti painted a series of meticulously observed portraits, notably a 5-year study of Isabel Lambert and Portrait of Jean Genet (1955)