Tim Marlow TV - Metropolitan Museum of Art - Alberto Giacometti - Mirror online - Fake or Fortune? TV - Alberto Giacometti by Stanley Tucci TV -
Alberto Giacometti: Standing Woman x3, c.1958-9, cast released by artist 1964: These works seem timeless and incredibly of their time. Tim Marlow on ... The New Tate Modern
The rough, eroded, heavily worked surfaces of Three Men Walking (II) 1949, typify his technique. Reduced, as they are, to their very core, these figures evoke lone trees in winter that have lost their foliage. Within this style, Giacometti would rarely deviate from the three themes that preoccupied him – the walking man; the standing, nude woman; and the bust – or all three, combined in various groupings. Metropolitan Museum of Art
Figures were never a compact mass but like a transparent construction. Alberto Giacometti
Yesterday a bronze sculpture was auctioned to an anonymous bidder for £65 million, which made it the most expensive piece of art ever to be sold.
We take a look at the man behind L’Homme Qui Marche ...
1. Alberto was born on 10th October 1901 in an Italian-speaking area of Switzerland to a well-known Post-Impressionist painter.
2. As a child, he drew pictures from the fairy-tales he heard and remembers being quite arrogant. He believed he could copy or understand anything better than anyone else.
3. In 1922 he went to Paris to learn from popular sculptor, Antoine Bourdelle.
4. At first his sculptures were of human heads. He used his brother and artist friend, Isabel Delmer, as models.
5. In 1941 he made friends with famous Existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
6. War in France forced him back to Switzerland where he made tiny sculptures, said to fit into half a dozen matchboxes.
7. On his return to Paris after the war, his sculptors became much taller and thinner. He said the final result represented the sensation he felt when he looked at a woman.
8. In 1962 he was awarded the grand prize for sculpture at the Venice Biennale, which won him global recognition. He had exhibitions around Europe and in New York.
9. In 1963 he had an operation for stomach cancer and said: ‘The strange thing is – as a sickness I always wanted to have this one.’
10. He died in 1966 of a heart attack in Switzerland. Mirror online article 4th February 2010, ‘Alberto Giacometti: 10 Things You Need to Know About the Art Behind £65 Million Walking Man 1 Bronze Sculpture’
We investigate a sculpture: could this curious piece of plaster be a rare abstract work by the man considered to be the greatest sculptor of the 20th century Alberto Giacometti? (Sculpture & Art & Artists: Giacometti) Fake or Fortune? s7e5: Giacometti, BBC 2018
At least five known plasters of Gazing Head, possibly six. ibid.
The Giacometti committee continues its work. ibid.
Final Portrait has been a labour of love which I have researched for more than two decades. It tells the story of an artist and personal hero of mine, Alberto Giacometti. I have been searching for the truth of this enigmatic and obsessive man. Alberto Giacometti by Stanley Tucci, Sky Arts 2020
Born in Switzerland in 1901, Giacometti is best known for his stick-thin human figures, which are now the most highly prized sculptures in the world. ibid.
Although rich and famous in his lifetime, he lived in squalor in the same tiny Paris studio keeping wads of cash under his bed, frequenting prostitutes, and getting into scrapes with the underworld. He lived in this unorthodox way until his death in 1966. ibid.
Almost all of Giacometti’s work, whether sculpture or painting, was focused on portraiture and the human form. ibid.