Alberto Giacometti was also a prolific painter and graphic artist. His creative legacy includes over 1,000 plaster and bronze sculptures, several hundred paintings, and nearly 10,000 original drawings.

Biography of Alberto Giacometti

Alberto was the eldest of four children in the family, his younger brother Diego later became a talented artist and designer, and Bruno one of the most famous Swiss architects of the second half of the 20th century.

The future sculptor was fond of drawing and sculpting clay figures in early childhood. In 1919 he left for Geneva and entered the School of Fine Arts and Crafts. After 12 months, having mastered the basics of the profession of a sculptor, Alberto dropped out of school and went on a long journey through Italy to see firsthand the masterpieces of the masters of antiquity and the Renaissance.

In 1922 he entered the private art academy of the Grande Chaumières. Giacometti entered the course of the famous sculptor Emile Antoine Bourdelle, who nurtured the spirit of free creativity in his students and had a great influence on the formation of the young man’s refined philosophical outlook.

The artist became interested in cubism, which was fashionable at the beginning of the 20th century, as well as in the primitive art of the peoples of Africa, Oceania and South America. Later, he became one of the most ardent adherents of surrealism and created dozens of works in this modernist style.

But in 1935, Alberto suddenly abandoned the surrealist model of art and started making unusual sculptures – elongated human figures and heads. It was this innovative style of creativity that subsequently brought the artist worldwide fame.

In 1940, after the occupation of Paris by the troops of Nazi Germany, Giacometti returned to his native Switzerland and settled in the city of Chur. Here he calmly survived the war years, continuing to create and experiment with bronze figurines. In 1949, the artist married an employee of the Red Cross, Annette Arm, and lived with this woman in a happy marriage until the end of his life. They had no children, so the master’s widow after his death became the only heir to a decent fortune.

But at the peak of his professional career, the sculptor began to experience serious health problems. For many years he was a heavy smoker, and this addiction ruthlessly destroyed his body. Despite the efforts of the best Swiss doctors, on January 11, 1966, Alberto Giacometti died of pericarditis and chronic pulmonary obstruction at the age of 64 in a hospital ward in the city of Chur. According to the will of the master, he was buried in his native village of Borgonovo, next to the graves of his father and mother.