Alberto Giacometti: Facts and Information

Here are some facts about Alberto Giacometti, the Swiss painter and sculptor.

  • Alberto Giacometti was born on 10th October 1901 in Borgonovo, Switzerland (near to the Italian border).
  • His father was the painter, Giovanni Giacometti.

  • Giacometti went to the Geneva School of Fine Arts.
  • He moved to Paris in 1922 and studied with the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle.
  • Giacometti’s work started to be influenced by cubism and surrealism.
  • His sculptures of the human form became larger, thinner and more elongated as the years passed by.
  • He once said that he wasn’t sculpting the human body but rather the shadow it cast.
  • He was an associate of Pablo Picasso and Joan Miro.
  • Giacometti died in 1966. He was suffering from heart disease and chronic bronchitis. He is buried in Borgonovo, his birthplace, close to his parents.
  • In 2000 one of Giacometti’s bronze sculptures, the lifesize L’Homme qui marche I, sold for about £65 million.
  • He was friends with the writer Samuel Beckett.
  • Alberto Giacometti had three brothers and sisters and they were often the inspiration for his sculptures and paintings.

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