Born into an artistic family, the son of a post-Impressionist painter, Alberto Giacometti would become one of the most progressive and innovative artists of the 20^th century best known for his sculptures of elongated stick-thin human forms.

His story begins in a small Swiss village at the age of thirteen where he and his brother, Diego make their first sculpture. Nine years later, Alberto Giacometti moved to Paris and embarked on his lifelong obsession to capture the essence of life under the direction of French sculptor Antoine Bourdelle. Influenced by Brancusi and Picasso, he too was inspired by non-Western art and archaeological objects. His stylized forms had a magical quality seen in the ancient art of the Cyclades, Asian antiquities and African sculpture that had become part of the Parisian avant-garde movement. In 1927, Giacometti started creating symbolic sculptures, most notably Femme Cuiller (Spoon Woman) referencing ceremonial African spoons that represented a woman’s womb. In 1929 his highly simplified white plaster sculpture with elongated indentations known as Gazing Head was exhibited in Paris, marking a defining moment in his life that brought him acclaim from the international art world.

The 1930's were also an important turning point in Giacometti's artistic career. On December 14, 1931, Alberto Giacometti wrote to his parents, “After lunch tomorrow, I am going to Miró to visit Picasso, and I’m thrilled at the prospect of meeting him and seeing what he does.” Both Picasso and Giacometti were sons of artists that had watched their fathers work and had both began to paint and sculpt from an early age. It would be Giacometti’s first time meeting the artist which would become the start of a lifelong, yet complicated friendship. Despite an age difference of twenty years, they shared a circle of friends that included Jean Cocteau and Max Jacob. Picasso’s Cubist work fascinated Giacometti and led him to explore his own creativity and experimentation of form. The two artists quickly established a very strong bond. Giacometti was part of a very few that Picasso saw as an equal. Picasso liked that Alberto had “the capacity to go straight to the heart of a problem without wasting time on useless questions of style” and under Giacometti’s advice, Picasso took up sculpture in 1940, a medium that he had explored as a young artist. He had great respect for his friend Alberto saying “Sculpture, in Giacometti’s hands, is what remains when the mind has forgotten all the details.” When Giacometti had his first solo show in Paris, Picasso was one of the first visitors.

When the Second War broke out, Alberto and his brother Diego fled Paris on bicycles to Geneva. Alberto returned to his Paris studio in 1945 with Annette Arm, who he later married in 1949 and would become one of his favourite models and a major influence on his work. During the war years Giacometti’s figures had become an emblem of the Resistance. His sculptures had become smaller and smaller, some reduced to the size of a finger. Now after the war, his work became an emblem of the Holocaust and survival. Walking Man, completed in 1947, was Giacometti’s first large sculpture. It was seen as a sacred monument to the Auschwitz victims and a pivotal time in the evolution of his work. He famously had a “complete transformation of reality” following his return to Paris marking the pieces we associate with Giacometti’s work today. Tall, slender, and almost ‘threadlike’, his most famous sculptures from this period are Man Pointing, The Chariot, Standing Woman, and Walking Man. Giacometti would return to these figures many, many times, sometimes reworking plaster forms for decades, before many were eventually cast in bronze.

The friendship between Giacometti and Picasso ended abruptly in Vallauris, June 1951. Giacometti criticized his friend for “not recognizing him at all and wanting to be the only artist in the limelight.” Picasso said his work lacked range and was repetitious. Picasso later admitted that he “considered Giacometti the best sculptor of the period.” At the end of Picasso’s life, he told a friend that there were two people he would have liked to see again – Andre Malraux and Alberto Giacometti. After Giacometti’s death in 1966 and Picasso’s death in 1973 the Musée Picasso and the Foundation Giacometti presented the first exhibition showcasing the close bond between two of the most important artists of the 20^th century in 2016. Picasso and Giacometti’s exhibitions have been held in Beijing, the Voorlinden Museum in the Netherlands and Doha, Qatar.

During his final years, Giacometti focused on portraits and paintings to accompany his sculptures. His favourite models were his wife Annette, his brother Diego and his lover Caroline. In 1962 he was awarded the grand prize for sculpture at the Venice Biennale, making him one of the world’s most sought-after artists. Alberto died at sixty-five leaving behind an incredible legacy representing his understanding of human nature - tragedy, suffering and resilience. Samuel Beckett wrote of his friend’s obsession -

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

After Alberto’s death, Annette dedicated her life to archiving and the conservation of his work. The Giacometti Foundation, located in Paris, was established in 2003 with a collection of over 5,000 pieces.

In 2015, ‘Man Pointing’, a bronze sculpture, was sold at Christie’s in New York for $141 million.