Alberto Giacometti Biography

In 1901 Alberto Giacometti was born in Borgonovo, near Stampa, in the Swiss
canton of Grisons. The village is in the Bregaglia Valley, one of the most
inaccessible regions of the Swiss Alps. An Italian dialect is spoken and the
religion is Calvinist. Alberto was the first child born to Annetta and Giovanni
Giacometti, the latter a neo-Impressionist painter. Alberto's godfather was the
Fauve painter Cuno Amiet.
In 1902 his brother Diego was born. He would become an artist and craftsman
and from 1925 lived in close contact with Alberto whom he helped by making
plaster casts and fixing the patinas of the bronzes. Diego created decorative
works, objects for everyday use and furniture.
In 1904 their sister Ottilia was born but died in 1937 giving birth to her son.
In 1906 the Giacometti family moved permanently to Stampa. His father
Giovanni transformed the barn into a studio where Alberto would work after his
fathers death.
In 1907 Bruno was born, the youngest Giacometti and a future architect. His
godfather was the celebrated painter Ferdinand Hodler.
In 1910 the family inherited a chalet in Maloja, on Lake Sils. They spent every
summer there and Alberto and his father drew and painted a great number of
landscapes.
1913 and 1914 in Stampa were happy childhood years for Alberto. Encouraged
by his father he had begun drawing while still very young: he illustrated tales,
such as Blanche-Neige, and made portraits of the members of his family.
In 1913 he did his first painting, a still life with apples.
In 1914 he did his first sculptures - plasteline busts of Diego and Bruno. He
began to copy works by Drer, Rembrandt and Van Eyck, an activity he was to
continue throughout his lifetime. He also drew landscape scenes from the life.
From 1915 to 1919 he attended the Evangelic High School in Shiers, near
Coira, where he perfected his German.
In 1919 he decided to enroll at the Fine Arts Academy of Geneva and become a
painter, attending David Estoppeys painting courses. The Academy was not a
happy experience and he changed to the Ecole des Arts Industriels where he
attended the sculpture and drawing courses taught by Maurice Sarkissoff, an
artist of Archipenkos circle.
In 1920-21 he made his first trip to Italy, accompanying his father to Venice
where the latter was the Swiss Federal Delegate for Fine Arts at the Biennial.
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Here he had the chance to see works by Czanne, Seurat, Redon and
Archipenko. He was struck by the cycle of the School of San Rocco and by the
works of Tintoretto. He was also interested in Bellini and the mosaics in St
Marks. He went on to Padua where he was strongly affected by the encounter
with Giotto in the Scrovegni Chapel: it led him to reflect on arts role in life and
how art is a way of looking at life.
A second trip to Italy took him to Florence where he discovered Egyptian art
and was impelled to go to Rome and see the Vatican collections. He stopped off
at Assisi and discovered Cimabue. He stayed six months in Rome in 1921,
taking an interest in antique art but above all in baroque and in the Byzantine
mosaics in the church of Saints Cosma and Damiano. He made a lot of notes
and went to concerts and the opera. He discovered Italian Futurism and read
and illustrated Greek tragedies. He worked for a long time on two busts which
in the end he destroyed: an early manifestation of the feeling of inadequacy and
insecurity that was to follow him all his life, arousing that sense of failure
produced by inability to create the model just as it is seen.
In autumn 1921, heading towards Pompeii and Paestum, he met Van Meurs, an
old Dutch librarian. They traveled together in Trentino, to Madonna di
Campiglio where Van Meurs suddenly died before Albertos unbelieving eyes.
This brutal death in a hotel room, recounted in the story Le rve, le Sphinx et la
mort de T., would remain impressed on his memory forever, an event that
would always take him back to the precariousness and transitoriness of life, to
the absurd and object-related nothingness of death.
In 1922 he moved to Paris to attend the courses held by Rodins pupil Antoine
Bourdelle at the Acadmie de la Grande Chaumire where he remained enrolled
until 1927. One of his fellow students was future art dealer Pierre Matisse, son
of the celebrated painter.
In 1924 he rented his first sudio at 72 Avenue Denfert-Rochereau.
In 1925 his brother Diego joined him in Paris and they moved together to a
second atelier at 37 rue Froidevaux. At the Salon des Tuileries, invited by
Bourdelle, he exhibited a traditional Tte de Diego and an avant-garde work,
a torso, probably a portrait of his then companion Flora Mayo which he later
destroyed. He met Henri Laurens and fell under his spell, like Lipchitz and
Brancusi. He frequented the Muse de lHomme and the Muse Trocadero,
developing an interest in African and Oceanian art and Cyclades and Sumerian
sculpture, which had a certain influence on his work. He discovered Surrealism
in this period.
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These various and contradictory influences and the impossibility of sculpting

from the life led him to a temporary abandonment of pure representation of
reality in favor of imaginary creations and stylized transpositions of the human
figure, such as Le Couple or Femme-cuillre or Torse, sculpture linking the
post-cubist phase and the Surrealist period.
In 1927, with the inseparable Diego, he moved permanently to a new studio at
46 rue Hyppolyte-Maindron. He met Andr Masson and, through him, Michel
Leiris (who would remain one of his closest friends), Raymond Queneau,
Georges Limbour, Robert Desons, Jacques Prvert, Georges Bataille, Alexander
Calder, Joan Mir and the publisher Triade.
His sculptural research led him to the creation of heads or figures, such as Tte
qui regarde, flattened into the form of blades, the surfaces just slightly
modelled with reliefs or depressions. He made them in plaster or had them done
in marble. He wanted to create by heart the reality of a head or body, tracing
out essentiality and compactness, everything coming from reflection on the
psyche.
His vision of total reality led him at the same time to create open, transparent
structures, some of which are stylizations of bodies while others are more
dramatic or complex combinations, achieving an interpretation of emptiness
and fullness, as in Apollo or Homme et Femme.
In 1928 with the exhibition of two sculptures (one of them Tte qui regarde) at
the Jeanne Bucher gallery, Alberto Giacomettis reputation spread throughout
the art world: he became an acknowledged part of the Paris avant-garde scene.
He signed a one year contract with Pierre Loeb, the accredited Surrealist art
dealer.
In 1929 Michel Leiris published the first important critical text on Giacometti
in Georges Batailles magazine Documents. Alberto also had two works in the
international sculpture exhibition organized by Triade at the Galerie Bernheim
in Paris.
In order to work freely without financial difficulties he begun, with his brother
Diego, to make objects for everyday use for the decorator Jean-Michel Frank,
jewellery for Elsa Schiapparelli and backgrounds and accessories in plaster for
Man Rays fashion photographs.
In 1930 he met Aragon, And Breton and Salvador Dal: he joined the Surrealist
movement, contributing to Bretons magazine Le Surralisme au Service de la
Rvolution. He gained great surrealist fame with which appeared, with works

by Arp and Mir, La boule suspendue in an exhibition at the Galerie Pierre

Loeb.
In 1931 he took part in the activities of the Grange-Batelire Anti-Colonialist
Pavilion and did political drawings for Aragons Anti-Imperialist League. The
drawings were exhibited in later years at the Maison de la Culture.
In 1932 the Galerie Pierre Colle organized his first solo exhibition, reviewed by
Christian Zervos in Cahiers Arts, where he exhibited Femme gorge, Palais
quatre heures du matin and On ne joue plus. He published the Surrealist text
Hier, sables mouvants.
In 1933, the year his father died, he took part in the exhibition of Surrealist
objects at the Galerie Pierre Colle and, with the Surrealist group, at the Salon
des Surindpendants. There were also numerous other exhibitions in many
European cities and in New York
In 1934, the Galerie Julien Levy organized his solo exhibition. He took up
engraving.
In 1933 he published a confession-story in Skira and Triades magazine
Minotaure titled Je ne puis parler quindirectement de mes sculptures.
Femme gorge ended the cruelty cycle and LObjet invisible, a masterpiece
of Giacomettis Surrealist period, summarized its impossible temptation and
striking fascination. The sculptures of 1934-35 gave a geometrical rigour,
almost abstract, bringing Giacometti back to reality and the model, such as in
Le Cube.
In 1934 he spent the summer in Maloja with Max Ernst as his guest. Together
they produced a series of sculptures taken from a nucleus of river stones and
Giacometti modeled his last Surrealist figure, the plaster 1+1=3.
His relationship with Breton started to break up because Giacometti was still
designing furnishings for Jean-Michel Frank and because he had decided to
work from a model in order to create compositions as close as possible to
reality. This return to the true, from which he had removed himself due to the
impossibility of representing what he wanted to represent, took him
permanently away from the Surrealist group. Giacometti lost many of his
friends and art dealers. His models were Diego in the morning and Rita in the
afternoon, and sometimes his English friend Isabel Lambert. The sculptures
became increasingly slender, after having undergone a certain shrinking.
His new friendships were with Balthaus, Tal Coat, Francis Gruber and Andr
Derain.

In 1935 he got to know Isabel Nicholas who would be his model for some
years.
In 1937 he kept the company of Picasso and Beckett. His sister Ottilia died in
childbirth the same year and her son Silvio became his future model for small
works between 1942 and 1945.
In 1938 he was hit by a car and, with a double fracture of the foot, was obliged
to sty in hospital for a few months. This accident threw him into a deep crisis
and left him with a slight limp for the rest of his life.
In 1939 he made friends with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. He got
to know Peggy Guggenheim as well.
In 1940 he gave up the model and the rendering of the real in order to return
to working by heart. Heads and figures, generally nude and standing, became
minuscule to the point of disappearing, an effect that continued throughout his
production up to 1945.
In 1941, as a result of the war, he moved to Genova and remained there until
1946. He met his future wife Annette Arm and survived by doing decoration
work. He often met former Minotaure editor Albert Skira who was setting up
another magazine, Labyrinthe, for which in 1946 Giacometti wrote one of his
most appealing and highly symbolic biographical stories, Le rve, le Sphinx et
la mort de T. He made friends with the photographer Elie Lotar. In this period
he worked on small format sculptures and sketched out Femme au chariot.
In 1946 he went back to Paris taking with him the latest little box sculptures.
He joked that they could fit into a box of matches.
- he "prolonged" his sculptures, but they remained thin
In 1948 he presented his recent works at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New
York (where he would also exhibit in 1950, 1954, 1955, 1958, 1961 and 1964).
The catalog includes a long text by Sartre entitled La recherce de lAbsolu and a
biographical letter from the artist to Pierre Matisse. This exhibition consecrated
Giacometti in the American art world and its market.
In 1949 he married Annette Arm.
By this time his style was officially recognized.
In 1950 he had his first great retrospective at the Kunsthalle in Basel and in the
same year was invited to exhibit in the French Pavilion at the Venice Biennale,
but he withdrew his works out of solidarity with Laurens whom he felt had
been badly treated.

He sculpted the Femme debout several times, highly elongated, a few figures in
movement such as Trois hommes qui marchent and Figurine dans une bote,
and groups of people: La Place, La Fort, La Clairire.
In 1951 he made friends with Aim Maeght who set up his first exhibition at the
Galerie Maeght in Paris where he would also exhibit in 1954, 1957 and 1961.
In tandem with his gallery activities Aim Maeght published the magazine
Derrire le Miroir in which Sartre, Gent and Leiris were to write long essays
on Giacomettis sculpture.
He had a great number of both solo and collective exhibitions in Europe and the
United States. The solo exhibitions were held in New York, Chicago, London,
Copenhagen, Berne, Zurich and Paris.
Between 1951 and 1955 he took an interest in lithography and subsequently in
engraving, that led him to illustrate books by Georges Bataille, Ren Char,
Michel Leiris, Andr du Bouchet, Olivier Larronde, Jacques Dupin and Lena
Leclerc.
In 1954 he got to know Jean Gent who in 1958 wrote the famous introspective
essay Latelier dAlberto Giacometti.
He continued sculpting, concetrating on the busts and on the Femme debout
series, struggling against elongation of the figures and flattening of the heads.
In 1955 his first great London retrospective was put on by The Arts Council of
Great Britain.
In 1956 he began work on a series of large figures on the theme of the Femme
debout which would be shown in the French Pavilion at the Venice Biennale
with the title Femme de Venise. His work in the atelier was immortalized by the
photographer Ernst Scheidegger and published in an important monograph.
From this cycle onwards the sculptures were no longer under threat of
disappearing due to lengthening or slimming down but Giacometti couldnt
manage to finish them. The same thing happened with the paintings in which he
anxiously sought to capture reality as he saw it. He tried a great number of
portraits. Diego and Annette still sat for him but another two people were soon
added: the Japanese professor of philosophy Yanaihara who would write a
monograph on him in 1958 and who sat for him from 1955 to 1961, and
Caroline, a woman with underworld connections, a young prostitute and his
lover, who was his model from 1959 to 1965.
In 1959 the architect Gordon Bunshaft commissioned a monument for the
piazza in front of the Chase Manhattan Bank skyscraper in New York. For this
project, never carried out, because Giacaometti wasnt happy with the relation
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between the sculpture and its environment, he imagined two Homme qui
marche, two Femme debout and one Grand tte on a plinth, thus in his view
summarizing the whole of his research. Subsequently he created several large
scale versions in bronze. Four of these sculptures would be painted and set out
by the artist in the courtyard of the Fondation Maeght, christened Giacometti
Court, where they are on permanent exhibition.
Giacometti achieved an impossible resemblance, especially in the busts of
Annette and the paintings of Caroline. He concentrated on the design of the eye,
the intensity of the glance, which for him seemed to control the variety of the
head.
In 1961 He created a plaster tree as a stage prop for Samuel Becketts Waiting
for Godot, produced at the Odeon Theatre. In the same year he won the
Carnegie Sculpture Prize in Pittsburgh.
In 1962 he won the Venice Biennale Prize, and the Kunsthaus in Zurich put on a
great retrospective.
In 1963 in Paris he underwent surgery as a result of stomach cancer.
In 1964 many of his works were exhibited at the inauguration of the Fondation
Maeght in Saint-Paul. In the same year he won the Guggenheim International
Prize for sculpture. His mother died.
In 1965, he was awarded the French Great National Prize for the Arts and
honorary degree from Berne University.
Lotar, his last model, began posing for several busts.
In 1965 there were three retrospectives: at the Tate Gallery in London, the
Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Louisiana Museum in
Humlebaek.
In the autumn Ernst Scheidegger, with Jacques Dupin, made a thirty minute
film on Giacometti in his rue Hyppolyte-Maindron atelier and in Stampa.
In December of the same year he was admitted to the canton hospital of Coira
where he died on 11th January 1966. On 15th January he was buried, as his
parents had been, in the Borgonovo cemetery.