H. L. Mencken
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Alberto Giacometti
Swiss sculptor and painter (1901-1966)
Alberto Giacomettiwas a Swiss sculptor, painter, draftsman and printmaker. Beginning in 1922, he lived and worked mainly in Paris but regularly visited his hometown Borgonovo to see his family and work on his art.
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About the Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacomettiwas a Swiss sculptor, painter, draftsman and printmaker. Beginning in 1922, he lived and worked mainly in Paris but regularly visited his hometown Borgonovo to see his family and work on his art.
Giacometti was one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century. His work was particularly influenced by artistic styles such as Cubism and Surrealism. Philosophical questions about the human condition, as well as existential and phenomenological debates played a significant role in his work. Around 1935 he gave up on his Surrealist influences to pursue a more deepened analysis of figurative compositions. Giacometti wrote texts for periodicals and exhibition catalogues and recorded his thoughts and memories in notebooks and diaries. His critical nature led to self-doubt about his own work and his self-perceived inability to do justice to his own artistic vision. His insecurities nevertheless remained a powerful motivating artistic force throughout his entire life.
Between 1938 and 1944 Giacometti’s sculptures had a maximum height of seven centimeters (2.75 inches). Their small size reflected the actual distance between the artist’s position and his model. In this context he self-critically stated: “But wanting to create from memory what I had seen, to my terror the sculptures became smaller and smaller”. After World War II, Giacometti created his most famous sculptures: his extremely tall and slender figurines. These sculptures were subject to his individual viewing experience–between an imaginary yet real, a tangible yet inaccessible space.
In Giacometti’s whole body of work, his painting constitutes only a small part. After 1957, however, his figurative paintings were equally as present as his sculptures. The almost monochrome paintings of his late work do not refer to any other artistic styles of modernity.
18 Quotes by Alberto Giacometti
- 1.
I’ve been fifty thousand times to the Louvre. I have copied everything in drawing, trying to understand.
Alberto GiacomettiSwiss sculptor and painter (1901-1966)
- 2.
In the past I have never thought about loneliness when working, and I don’t think about it now. Yet there must be a reason for the fact that so many people talk about it.
Alberto GiacomettiSwiss sculptor and painter (1901-1966)
- 3.
All I can do will only ever be a faint image of what I see and my success will always be less than my failure or perhaps equal to the failure.
Alberto GiacomettiSwiss sculptor and painter (1901-1966)
- 4.
Once the object has been constructed, I have a tendency to discover in it, transformed and displaced, images, impressions, facts which have deeply moved me.
Alberto GiacomettiSwiss sculptor and painter (1901-1966)
- 5.
It was always disappointing to see that what I could really master in terms of form boiled down to so little.
Alberto GiacomettiSwiss sculptor and painter (1901-1966)
- 6.
I paint and sculpt to get a grip on reality… to protect myself.
Alberto GiacomettiSwiss sculptor and painter (1901-1966)
- 7.
I don’t know if I work in order to do something, or in order to know why I can’t do what I want to do.
Alberto GiacomettiSwiss sculptor and painter (1901-1966)
- 8.
Whores are the most honest girls. They present the bill right away.
Alberto GiacomettiSwiss sculptor and painter (1901-1966)
- 9.
If only someone else could paint what I see, it would be marvellous, because then I wouldn’t have to paint at all.
Alberto GiacomettiSwiss sculptor and painter (1901-1966)
- 10.
In every work of art the subject is primordial, whether the artist knows it or not. The measure of the formal qualities is only a sign of the measure of the artist’s obsession with his subject; the form is always in proportion to the obsession.
Alberto GiacomettiSwiss sculptor and painter (1901-1966)
- 11.
That’s the terrible thing: the more one works on a picture, the more impossible it becomes to finish it.
Alberto GiacomettiSwiss sculptor and painter (1901-1966)
- 12.
It is impossible to do a thing the way I see it because the closer I get the more differently I see.
Alberto GiacomettiSwiss sculptor and painter (1901-1966)
- 13.
All the sculptures of today, like those of the past, will end one day in pieces… So it is important to fashion ones work carefully in its smallest recess and charge every particle of matter with life.
Alberto GiacomettiSwiss sculptor and painter (1901-1966)
- 14.
Artistically I am still a child with a whole life ahead of me to discover and create. I want something, but I won’t know what it is until I succeed in doing it.
Alberto GiacomettiSwiss sculptor and painter (1901-1966)
- 15.
Only reality interests me now and I know I could spend the rest of my life in copying a chair.
Alberto GiacomettiSwiss sculptor and painter (1901-1966)
- 16.
I’ve tried doing so, for it was never my intention to paint only with gray. But in the course of my work I have eliminated one color after another, and what has remained is gray, gray, gray!
Alberto GiacomettiSwiss sculptor and painter (1901-1966)
- 17.
When you look at art made by other people, you see what you need to see in it.
Alberto GiacomettiSwiss sculptor and painter (1901-1966)
- 18.
The older I grow, the more I find myself alone.
Alberto GiacomettiSwiss sculptor and painter (1901-1966)