When we look at a painting hanging on an art gallery wall, we see only what the artist has chosen to disclose--the finished work of art. What remains mysterious is the process of creation itself--the making of the work of art. Everyone who has looked at paintings has wondered about this, and numerous efforts have been made to discover and depict the creative method of important artists. A Giacometti Portrait is a picture of one of the century's greatest artists at work. James Lord sat for eighteen days while his friend Alberto Giamcometti did his portrait in oil. The artist painted, and the model recorded the sittings and took photographs of the work in its various stages. What emerged was an illumination of what it is to be an artist and what it was to be Giacometti--a portrait in prose of the man and his art. A work of great literary distinction, A Giacometti Portrait is, above all, a subtle and important evocation of a great artist.

A comprehensive survey of the work of the legendary Swiss artist, this book illustrates and examines more than 100 of his sculptures, paintings, drawings, and prints This lavishly illustrated retrospective traces the early and midcareer development of the preeminent Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966), examining the emergence of his distinct figural style through works including a series of walking men, elongated standing women, and numerous busts. Rare paintings and drawings from his formative period show the significance of landscape in Giacometti's work, while also revealing the influence of the postimpressionist painters that surrounded his father, the artist Giovanni Giacometti. Other areas of inquiry on which Alberto Giacometti casts new light are his studio practice--amply illustrated with photographs--his obsessive focus on depicting the human head, his collaborations with poets and writers, and his development of the walking man sculpture, thanks to numerous drawings, many of which have never been shown. Original essays by modern art and Giacometti specialists shed new light on era-defining sculptural masterpieces, including the Walking Man, the Nose, and the Chariot, or on key aspects of his work, such as the significance of surrealism, his drawing practice, or the question of space.

Laurie Wilson shows how Giacometti's secret beliefs & emotional scars are reflected in his sculpture, drawings & paintings.

Gathered writings from the seminal 20th-century Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti Alberto Giacometti's early Surrealist and Cubist forms, compact volumes inspired by Africa and the Cyclades, eventually led this seminal twentieth-century Swiss artist to acknowledge a formal void that he would spend the balance of his career filling with the human figure. In the mid-1930s, influenced by the terrible social and political changes that were taking place across Europe, Giacometti began to develop heads and nudes in a signature style--they were universally elongated, skeletal, haunting, solitary and above all, transcendent. Giacometti's written testimony and reflections on his change of perspective, and on his artistic ideas and goals, are remarkable for their aptness and poetic quality. In his writings, gathered here, the artist pours out his doubts, his suffering and his creative hopes as very few artists have been capable of doing before or since.

Winner of a Venice Bienniale Golden Lion Award, Looking at Giacometti is a compelling mixture of biography and criticism, including an extraordinary interview with Giacometti. Written over a period of forty years, Looking at Giacometti is a profound response to the art of one of modernism’s greatest sculptors. It takes students from world-renowned art critic David Sylvester’s first visits to Giacometti’s studio in the late 1940s to the author’s prolonged sitting for the artist’s portrait of him in the 1960 and reflections on his complete oeuvre after Giacometti’s death. A compelling mixture of biography and criticism, and including a sixteen-page insert of black and white photographs by Patricia Matisse, this book sheds new light on twentieth-century art and thought.

"Part of the Tate Introductions series, this richly illustrated and accessible book provides an engaging and concise account of Giacometti's work and life. It explores the story of the artist's evolution, from his first sketchbooks and professional works of art through his extraordinary Surrealist compositions, to the emergence of his mature style." --Publisher's decsription.

Alberto Giacometti forged a singular path within European Modernism, restlessly seeking a new language for sculpture as the double of reality. His quest brought him into close, face-to-face contact with some of the most influential intellectuals of the twentieth century--including Georges Bataille, Jean Genet, and Samuel Beckett. Tracing how these literary friendships molded the artist's creative development, Alberto Giacometti: Face to Face discovers new continuities among the various strains of modernist thought and develops a fresh approach to Giacometti and his work. This accessible overview of Giacometti's career is illustrated by more than 150 reproductions of his sculptures and paintings as well as excerpts from the literature that shaped his ideas, tracking the evolution of his work from post-cubism through surrealism and into post-war realism.

This comprehensive volume examines the little-known relationship—both artistic and personal—between two of the greatest avant-garde artists of the twentieth century. Pablo Picasso and Alberto Giacometti, each in their own way, deeply disrupted existing artistic codes and pushed the barriers of established aesthetic canons in the domains of painting and sculpture. This tome reveals their friendship and the little-known artistic dialogue between them on the subjects and questions central to their work. Richly illustrated, this volume establishes clear correlations in their artistic production and provides new insight into the Picasso and Giacometti ateliers through incisive essays from art historians, which draw on previously unpublished documents. An anthology of historical texts offers the intimate perspective of the master artists’ contemporaries including Man Ray, whose descriptions reveal fascinating portraits of the characters and working habits of his two friends.

This book looks at a refined selection of drawings by Alberto Giacometti and examines them against the background provided by more than one hundred letters exchanged between Giacometti and his parents, the majority of which have not previously been published. The choice of drawings and the selected correspondence illuminate important aspects of the development of Giacometti's work over five decades of his life. Furthermore, Patrick de Vries examines Alberto Giacometti's friendships with important contemporary artists such as Pablo Picasso, Francis Gruber, Balthus, and Tal-Coat, and discloses the artists' views of each other, as well as links and dissimilarities in their work. Discussions with Giacometti's friend, the Japanese philosopher Isaku Yanaihara, reveal interesting insights into the, rarely discussed, subject of Giacometti's fascination with East Asian Art.

"Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) always saw himself at the center of a cosmos of events and people, a notion that characterized his examination of the relation between figure, time, and space, and in which the members of his family played an important role. Alberto's father, the painter Giovanni Giacometti, encouraged his son from an early age. His brother Diego was his assistant and model, and after Alberto's death, he became famous for his bronze furniture. Bruno, the youngest brother and a renowned architect; Annetta, his mother; Annette, Alberto's wife; and Silvio, the son of his sister Ottilia, who died in childbirth, were all indispensable models for him. Finally, although he was only a distant relative, Augusto Giacometti, whose abstract paintings continue to fascinate viewers to this day, was the "other genius" of the Giacometti family." "This generously illustrated publication based on the latest developments in research, this publication is devoted to the great sculptor, painter, and draftsman Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) and his family. Focusing on Alberto's works, it traces the lives of the Giacomettis and provides a deeper understanding of the art produced by its most famous member." --Book Jacket.