Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966)

Alberto Giacometti was born in the small mountain village of Borgonovo, Switzerland. His parents were Annetta and Giovanni Giacometti, a well-known Post-Impressionist painter. His iyounger brothers Diego and Bruno also became artists. Encouraged by his family, Alberto began to draw and sculpt at a very young age. He studied at the Geneva School of Fine Arts, then moved to Paris at age 21. There he studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière under Antoine Bourdelle, who had worked and taught with Auguste Rodin. In 1926 he bought the small, shabby studio in which he worked throughout his career, even after achieving financial success. Giacometti befriended many major artists and writers, including Man Ray, Joan Miró, Max Ernst, André Breton, Louis Aragon, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir. He experimented with Surrealism and Cubism, quickly became a leading sculptor. He turned away from an avant-garde style at the end of 1934 and rekindled an interest in the human form. In June 1940, Alberto and his brother Diego fled Paris by bicycle to escape the invading German Army. He spent most of World War II in Geneva. In 1945, after the liberation of Paris, he returned to the city. His former lover Annette Arm joined him there, and the two were married in 1949. The elongated figures Giacometti made during this period, such as Walking Man, are probably his best-known works. He was also producing paintings, drawings, and writings. He became internationally famous in the 1950s, with his work exhibited throughout Europe and the USA. He created a tree for the set of a 1961 Paris production of Waiting for Godot by his friend Samuel Beckett. However, in the 1960s, Giacometti's health began to fail from his irregular lifestyle and overwork, and he died of complications of pericarditis at age 65.