Biography of alberto giacometti drawings

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Summary of Alberto Giacometti

Alberto Giacometti's remarkable career traces the shifting enthusiasms of europeisk art before and after the Second World War. As a Surrealist in the s, he devised innovative sculptural forms, sometimes reminiscent of toys and games. And as an Existentialist after the war, he led the way in creating a style that summed up the philosophy's interests in observation, alienation and anxiety. Although his output extends into painting and drawing, the Swiss-born and Paris-based artist is most famous for his sculpture. And he is perhaps best remembered for his figurative work, which helped make the motif of the suffering human figure a popular symbol of post-war trauma.

Accomplishments

Giacometti's work of the s represents probably the most important contribution to Surrealist sculpture. In an effort to explore themes derived from Freudian psychoanalysis, like sexuality, obsession and trauma, he developed a variety of different sculptural objects. Some wer

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After his formative years at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière (–6), Giacometti rejected working from the model and used drawing as an exercise accompanying the development of his thinking. Alongside the preparatory sketches in his many notebooks, drawn mainly in pencil, he also made separate drawings on individual sheets that he reprised carefully in his works in pen and ink. In his notebooks he also made numerous sketches of his existing works, from memory. These inaugurated his singular practice of ‘retrospective’ drawing, made famous by his Lettre à Pierre Matisse. This would remain a part of the artist’s ongoing reflection and discourse on his work right up to the end of his career.

During his surrealist period (c–35) Giacometti neglected, but did not totally abandon, ‘conventional’ perspective and the chiaroscuro drawing technique in favour of a combination of abstract signs and stylised figurative motifs. This technique, which w

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Alberto Giacometti

Biography

29 Dec

1. A youth spent in a studio

Alberto Giacometti grew up in Switzerland in the Val Bregaglia alpine valley, a few kilometers from the Swiss-Italian border. His father, Giovanni Giacometti () was an impressionist painter esteemed by Swiss collectors and artists. He shared his thoughts with his son on art and the nature of art.

27 Dec

2. The encounter with the arts of Africa and Oceania

Giacometti’s work shows the influence of African and Oceanian sculpture. When the young artist developed an interest in African art in , it was no longer a novelty for the modern artists of the previous generation (Picasso, Derain); it had even become popularized to the point of becoming decorative.

07 Dec

3. The surrealist experiment

Giacometti joined A