Alberto Giacometti
 Alberto
Giacometti was a
Swiss
sculptor,
painter,
draftsman, and
printmaker. Giacometti was a popular artist and sculptor renowned for his
complete dedication to his work. He is best known for is sculptures
of the human form, stretched out with elongated limbs. Alberto
Giacometti was born in the little village of Borgonovo in the Swiss
canton of Grisons on October 10, 1901. He spent his first school
years in the neighboring village of Stampa. Alberto's father,
Giovanni Giacometti, was a neo-impressionist painter, and under his
instructions Alberto learned to paint and make models. His father
introduced him to working in the atelier, his godfather (the painter
Cuno Amiet) taught him the latest styles and techniques, and the
other members of his family assisted with his artistic development
by sitting for him as models. In 1916, during high school, Alberto
Giacometti displayed total mastery of impressionist language in a
portrait of his mother modeled with plastilina. Shortly before
graduating from secondary school, Giacometti dropped out of school
in 1919 to fully dedicate himself to art. Following a trip to Venice and Rome in 1920, during which Giacometti developed a passion for the work of Tintoretto and Giotto, he resolved to recover the innocent gaze of man's origins through primitive art and anthropology. In 1922 Alberto Giacometti moved to Paris to study under the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, an associate of Auguste Rodin. It was there that Giacometti experimented with cubism and surrealism. Among his associates were Joan Miró, Max Ernst, Pablo Picasso and Balthus. It was at this point he started writing and drawing for his magazine Le surréalisme au Service de la Révolution and he began to establish himself as a leading sculptor of the Surrealist movement. |
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 In
1925 Alberto's brother Diego joined him in Paris and became his
permanent assistant. Between 1936 and 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. 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." His paintings underwent a parallel procedure. The
figures appear isolated, are severely attenuated, and are the result of
continuous reworking. Subjects were frequently revisited: one of his
favorite models was his younger brother Diego Giacometti. During World War II, Alberto Giacometti 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. 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 woman. |
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 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. 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. In 1962, Alberto Giacometti was awarded the grand prize for sculpture at the
Venice Biennale, and the award brought with it worldwide fame. Giacometti's
striding or standing figures find themselves in emptiness and isolation.
In this intensive-subjective representation, an existential exposure and
angst based on the immediacy of the moment is hinted at. To many they
are a reflection of the spiritual situation of the time. Just like his
sculptures, Giacometti's drawings and paintings depict the lost human
being in the emptiness of space with great intensity and sensibility.
The formal characteristics are a graphic network of lines, with which
Giacometti extracted volumes from areas, and an almost monochrome color
scheme used in his paintings. Even when he had
achieved popularity and his work was in demand, he still reworked models, often
destroying them or setting them aside to be returned to years later. 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. Alberto Giacometti died January 11, 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. Alberto Giacometti was a key player in the Surrealist Movement, but his work resists easy categorization. Some describe it as formalist, others argue it is expressionist. Alberto Giacometti's unmistakable works are present in all the world's major collections, representing art in the mid 20th century in an exemplary way. |
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