In his Fifties and Sixties heyday, Alberto Giacometti was seen as a sculptor who did portraits on the side.

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Swiss, 1901–1966. In the winter of 1947, Alberto Giacometti wrote a letter to Pierre Matisse, a gallerist in New York who was organizing an exhibition of his works. “Here is the list of sculptures that I promised you,” the letter began, “but I could not make it without including, though very briefly, a certain chain of events.”1 The “chain of events” starts with the artist’s youth in Switzerland in the early 1900s, then proceeds to his search for new modes of artistic expression in the 1920s…

From Yuz Museum, Alberto Giacometti, Walking Man I (1960), Bronze, 180.5 × 23.9 × 97 cm

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Although Alberto Giacometti is most often remembered for his towering statues and landscape paintings, the artist began every new project with a sketch. Preferring either a ballpoint pen or pencil, he referred to the act of drawing as the “basis” for all of his artworks. In Alberto Giacometti: Toward the Ultimate Figure—the extensive retrospective which …

James Lord

Alberto Giacometti Biography