1. Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966)
Alberto Giacometti
( )
Art 109A: Contemporary Art (Arts Since 1945)
Westchester Community College

2. Alberto Giacometti Swiss-born Leading sculptor in Paris
Began as a Surrealist
Alberto Giacometti, The Palace at 4 a.m.., Construction in wood, glass, wire, string MOMA
Irving Penn, Alberto Giacometti, Art Institute of Chicago

3. Alberto Giacometti
Took refuge in Switzerland during the war where he worked on tiny figure sculptures done from memory
“Wanting to create from memory what I have seen . . to my terror the sculptures became smaller and smaller . . .”
Alberto Giacometti
Henri Cartier-Bresson, Alberto Giacametti
Image source:

4. Alberto Giacometti
Upon his return to Paris he began casting them in bronze, and placing them on enormous bases
Gordon Parks, Alberto Giacometti, 1951
LIFE Magazine

5. Alberto Giacometti
His work typically consists of strangely elongated figures, alone or in groups, occupying vast tracts of empty space
Alberto Giacometti, The City Square,
Museum of Modern Art

6. Giacometti’s figures are diminutive, and appear fragile and frail . . . .

7. Their insignificance and alienation is further amplified by the size of the bases he made for them, creating a vast expanse of space that seems to envelop them
Image source:

8. Featureless and anonymous, Giacometti’s lonely figures seem to wander aimlessly through what Simone de Beauvoir called an “infinite and terrifying emptiness of space,” as each seeks to “make their way” in the world.

9. Alberto Giacometti 1945 began working on a larger scale
“But then to my surprise, [the figures] achieved a likeness only when tall and slender.”
Alberto Giacometti
Henri Cartier-Bresson, Giacometti in his Studio, c Wikipedia

10. Alberto Giacometti, Man Pointing, 1947
Museum of Modern Art
Alberto Giacometti. Walking Man, 1960 (cast 1981). Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti, Paris © Adagp

11. Tall and slender to the point of emaciation, the man points into the infinite space that surrounds him
Alberto Giacometti, Man Pointing (L’homme au doigt),  Bronze with patina and hand-painted by the artist.  Height:  69 7/8″.  Christies

12. “Man – and man alone – reduced to a thread – in the dilapidating and misery of the world – who searches for himself – starting from nothing.”
Francis Ponge, “Reflections on the Statuettes, Figures and Paintings by Alberto Giacometti”

13. Alberto Giacometti
Sartre likened Giacometti’s work to prehistoric cave painting
“. . . neither the beautiful nor the ugly yet existed, neither taste nor people possessing it.”
Jean Paul Sartre
Alberto Giacometti, Head of a Man on a Rod, Bronze, 1947
Museum of Modern Art

14. Alberto Giacometti
He also discussed the artist’s manipulation of perception
Phenomenological size: scale is determined by our relation to the work
Gordon Parks, Skeletal Giacometti sculpture on Parisian street, 2005
LIFE Magazine

15. “They are moving outlines, always half-way between nothingness and being”
Jean Paul Sartre
View of the sculpture “Three Men Walking”, made by painter and sculptor Alberto Giacometti ( ) at the Fondation Beyeler in Switzerland. Image source: Georgios Kefalas

16. Alberto Giacometti
Giacometti “shows us that man is not there first and to be seen afterwards, but that he is a being whose essence is to exist for others.”
Jean Paul Sartre
Gordon Parks, Skeletal Giacometti sculpture on Parisian street, 2005
LIFE Magazine

17. Alberto Giacometti
“At first glance we seem to be up against the fleshless martyrs of Buchenwald”
Alberto Giacometti, The Chariot, Museum of Modern Art

18. Alberto Giacometti
“But a moment later we have a quite different conception; these fine and slender natures rise up to heaven, we seem to have come across a group of Ascensions, of Assumptions”
Jean Paul Sartre