Alberto Giacometti grew in Switzerland, a few kilometres from the Italian-Swiss border. His father, Giovanni Giacometti (1868 – 1933) is an impressionist painter estimated by Swiss collectors and artists. He shared with his son his reflexions on art and its nature.

At the age of 14, Alberto Giacometti created in his father’s studio his first oil painting – Still Life with Apple (circa 1915) – and his first sculpted bust – Diego’s head on its pedestal. His father and his godfather, symbolist painter Cuno Amiet (1868 – 1961) are two essential figures in Alberto ‘s artistic development. En 1922, Giacometti went to study in Paris and integrate the Académie de la Grande – Chaumière, where he learned sculpture with Antoine Bourdelle (1861 – 1929). Some nudes’ drawings show this learning, and the influence of Jacques Lipchitz and Fernand Léger for his first cubist sculptures.

Giacometti’s artwork is marked by the influence of African and Oceanic sculpture. When Giacometti took an interest in 1926, the African Art isn’t anymore an innovation, especially for the modern artists of the past generation (Picasso, Derain). African Art is even become decorative. The two artworks that increase the interest of the public for Giacometti – Spoon Woman and Couple, exhibited in 1927 at the Salon des Tuileries in Paris, testify this deeply affecting meeting between African Art and the artist.

En 1928, Giacometti began a series of women with fat head, in which the novelty is noticed in 1929, and he obtained his first contract with a gallery – Pierre Loeb Gallery who exhibits Surrealists. In this period, Giacometti frequents Carl Einstein, the author of Neferplastik (1915), the reference book for African Sculpture, and Michel Leiris who became a specialist of Dogon Art. Few late artworks, including painted plaster and some paintings, show how the non – occidental art affected durably his production. Giacometti moved away from a naturalistic and academic representation, for a totemic –sometimes-distraught – vision of figure, with a magical power.

Giacometti joined the Surrealist movement of André Breton in 1931 but was excluded from the group in 1935. Nevertheless, the surrealist technics have a continuous importance in his creation: oneiric vision, assembly, objects with metaphorical functioning, and magical treatment of the figure. The Group noticed Giacometti with The Looking Head in 1929, and The Walking Woman of 1932 – made as a model for the surrealist exhibition of 1933 - appeared in its actual version without arm and head at the Surrealist Exhibition in London in 1936. A painted version of the construction on a tray, entitled The Palace at 4. Am, evokes the theatrical aspect of his oneiric world. Effective member of Breton’s Group, Giacometti established himself as the only sculptor of the Group. Giacometti shows the persistence of the link between him and the movement, especially when he created in 1965 for a retrospective in London a final version of the Hanging Ball and giving a painted version.

Creating art decorative objects, Giacometti showed his interest for utilitarian objects he admired in antic and primitive societies. In 1931, Giacometti created a new typology of sculptures: Mobile and Mute Object, ojects with latent and suggested movement made in wood by a carpenter. As the Disagreeable Object and Disagreeable Object to throw, Hanging Ball establishes a link between object and sculpture, and interrogates the art position itself. In some of his sculptures, Giacometti resorts for the first time to the method of “the cage” which allows him to define an oneiric space of representation. From 1930, Giacometti created many utilitarian objects – lamps, vases, and wall lamp – that were sold by the avant garde decorator Jean – Michel Frank.

He also created bas – relief in plaster or terra cotta for special order, especially for the mansion of Louis Dreyfus in Paris. In 1939, he is among the artists approached to a large order of an argentine collector, for which he draws fireplaces, chandeliers and consoles. Just before sending in Buenos Aires, the complete set, coordinated by Jean Michel Frank, is established in a full – scale model in Paris. After the war, Giacometti continued to create objects, including a lamp in 1950 inspired by the dogon statuary, Egyptian funeral objects and a scarf in 1959 for his art dealer Aimé Maeght.

Jean – Paul Sartre, who Giacometti met in 1941, wrote two fundamentals essays on Giacometti’s art. Published in 1948 and 1954, these essays are essentially about the issue of the perception, and his conversation with the Japanese translator of Sartre, Isaku Yanaihara, philosophy professor who posed for him in 1956 and 1961. In 1948, the French State, which wanted to honour French artists and intellectuals, ordered to Giacometti a medal for Jean – Paul Sartre.

From 1951 to his death, Giacometti made a series of “black heads” which gives substance to the concept of “generic man” that Sartre summarises in 1964 in his novels Les Mots: “A whole man, made by all men and who worth all them and anyone”. This is the capital contribution of Giacometti at the history of portraits of the 20th century. Giacometti’s portraits, painted and sculpted, are the translation of the model as irreducible otherness. Without emotions or expressions, these portraits are the repositories of what people see. His favourite models are those who live by his side: Annette, his wife since 1949, and Diego, his brother and assistant. They are used for his most advanced research. Working from memory, he brings out their image in an imaginary space. Working from the model, he refuses the classical perspective to render the model as he sees it, in its aspect always changing.

During his life, Giacometti used all print technics: wood, burin, etching, aquatint and especially lithography from 1949. Best man of André Breton at his wedding in 1934, he illustrated the collection offered by the poet to his wife, The Blue Air. Great amateur of books and friend of numerous writers and poets, Giacometti illustrated the works of René Crevel (Les Pieds dans le Plat, 1933), George Bataille (Histoire de rats, 1947), Michel Leiris (Vivantes cendres, innomméés, 1961) ou René Char (Retour Amont, 1965).

From 1951, he realized lithographic board published separately by the Maeght Gallery. Giacometti has always been a supporter of the dissemination of his work with edition of quality, for his objects of decorative art of melting bronze or his drawings by engraving. Lithography is the best medium for this diffusion, because it only requires a light and manoeuvrable material: special paper and lithographical pencil, which allows spontaneity of the line. Thus, Giacometti could go out of his studio on the street and sketch the street, terraces, railway, and modernization project as Orly Airport. This will be the subject of Paris sans Fin, collection of 150 print ordered by the editor Tériade, which Giacometti worked from 1959 and which was published after his untimely death.