Alberto Giacometti

This Work attempts the difficult task of a reevaluation of the career of the least recognized of the great 20th century artsists. Giacometti's personal life has remained a subject of continuing fascination. In some ways it has acquired emblematic status. Here is the archetypical bohemian artist who after achieving international recognition continues to occupy the same rundown studio in Paris. For Giacometti life and art embodied and expressed a persistent struggle. His was an art of obstruction: of reworking, erasing, decomposing and retrieving. The whole of his aspirations are embodied in his cry - constantly attested to - "to be able to make a head, one head, just once". The present study examines the artist's formative years, his grappling with Cubism in the '20s and his lifelong consideration of two of the major currents of thought of our time: surrealism and existentialism. Giacometti's sculptures are of course dealt with in some detail, but this work also devotes considerable analysis to the body of his painted work.