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.
