(Borgonovo di Stampa, Canton dei Grigioni, Switzerland, 10 October 1901 – Coira, Canton dei Grigioni, Switzerland, 11 January 1966)
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Swiss painter, engraver and sculptor.
Known for his filiform figures, his father, Giovanni Giacometti, was a post impressionist painter and his mother was a descendant of protestant italian refugees.
His first teacher was his father and, later, attended to the Geneva School of Art and Design.
In 1919 he studies sculpture in Paris with Emilie Antoine Bourdelle.
In 1922 he moves to Rome to study the great masters of the past and there he became passionate about the work of Tintoretto and Giotto, developing a personal concept.
He became part of the surrealistic group in 1928 from which he goes away seven years later, but still continuing to participate to their exhibitions.
From 1935 to 1940 he dedicates to the study of the head.
Alberto Giacometti’s sculptures are long, elegant, imposing and existentially emaciated figures. Unsurprisingly, Giacometti was inspired by a greyhound to create “Dog” in 1951.
In 1962, at the Venice Biennale, he receives the grand prize to sculpture.
Gravely ill, he goes to New York to inaugurate his exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.
His last work is a text for the book “Paris Without End”: a sequence of 150 photographs.
He dies in 11th January 1966.
