22 Facts About Alberto Giacometti

Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draftsman and printmaker.

Alberto Giacometti's work was particularly influenced by artistic styles such as Cubism and Surrealism.

Alberto Giacometti wrote texts for periodicals and exhibition catalogues and recorded his thoughts and memories in notebooks and diaries.

Between 1938 and 1944 Alberto Giacometti's sculptures had a maximum height of seven centimeters.

Alberto Giacometti was a descendant of Protestant refugees escaping the inquisition.

Between 1936 and 1940, Alberto Giacometti concentrated his sculpting on the human head, focusing on the sitter's gaze.

Alberto Giacometti frequently revisited his subjects: one of his favourite models was his younger brother Diego.

In 1958 Alberto Giacometti was asked to create a monumental sculpture for the Chase Manhattan Bank building in New York, which was beginning construction.

The commission was never completed because Alberto Giacometti was unsatisfied by the relationship between the sculpture and the site, and abandoned the project.

In 1962, Alberto Giacometti was awarded the grand prize for sculpture at the Venice Biennale, and the award brought with it worldwide fame.

Alberto Giacometti died in 1966 of heart disease and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease at the Kantonsspital in Chur, Switzerland.

Alberto Giacometti's body was returned to his birthplace in Borgonovo, where he was interred close to his parents.

Alberto Giacometti worked to collect a full listing of authenticated works by her late husband, gathering documentation on the location and manufacture of his works and working to fight the rising number of counterfeited works.

When she died in 1993, the Fondation Alberto Giacometti was set up by the French state.

Since Alberto Giacometti achieved exquisite realism with facility when he was executing busts in his early adolescence, Alberto Giacometti's difficulty in re-approaching the figure as an adult is generally understood as a sign of existential struggle for meaning, rather than as a technical deficit.

Alberto Giacometti was a key player in the Surrealist art movement, but his work resists easy categorization.

Alberto Giacometti attempted to create renditions of his models the way he saw them, and the way he thought they ought to be seen.

Alberto Giacometti once said that he was sculpting not the human figure but "the shadow that is cast".

Scholar William Barrett in Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy, argues that the attenuated forms of Alberto Giacometti's figures reflect the view of 20th century modernism and existentialism that modern life is increasingly empty and devoid of meaning.

Alberto Giacometti is best known for the bronze sculptures of tall, thin human figures, made in the years 1945 to 1960.

Alberto Giacometti was influenced by the impressions he took from the people hurrying in the big city.

Alberto Giacometti created the monument on the grave of Gerda Taro at Pere Lachaise Cemetery.