Editing Alberto Giacometti (section)

== Artistic analysis ==
[[File:Photograph of Alberto Giacometti by Cartier Bresson.jpg|thumb|upright 1.5|Alberto Giacometti<br />Photo by [[Henri Cartier-Bresson]]]]

Regarding Giacometti's sculptural technique and according to the [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]]: "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''.''"<ref name="Metropolitan Museum of Art">{{cite web| url = http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/489978?rpp=20&pg=1&ao=on&ft=alberto+giacometti&pos=6| title = Metropolitan Museum of Art}}</ref>

In a letter to [[Pierre Matisse]], Giacometti wrote: "Figures were never a compact mass but like a transparent construction".<ref name=MOMA>{{cite press release |title=Alberto Giacometti |year=1965|publisher=The Museum of Modern Art, in collaboration with the Art Institute of Chicago|location=Garden City, New York|url=http://www.moma.org/pdfs/docs/press_archives/3481/releases/MOMA_1965_0057_56.pdf?2010 |pages=14–28 }}</ref>  In the letter, Giacometti writes about how he looked back at the realist, classical busts of his youth with nostalgia, and tells the story of the existential crisis which precipitated the style he became known for.

"[I rediscovered] the wish to make compositions with figures. For this I had to make (quickly I thought; in passing), one or two studies from nature, just enough to understand the construction of a head, of a whole figure, and in 1935 I took a model. This study should take, I thought, two weeks and then I could realize my compositions...I worked with the model all day from 1935 to 1940...Nothing was as I imagined.  A head, became for me an object completely unknown and without dimensions."<ref name=MOMA />

Since Giacometti achieved exquisite realism with facility when he was executing busts in his early adolescence, Giacometti's difficulty in re-approaching the figure as an adult is generally understood as a sign of existential struggle for meaning, rather than as a technical deficit.

Giacometti was a key player in the [[Surrealist]] art movement, but his work resists easy categorization. Some describe it as formalist, others argue it is expressionist or otherwise having to do with what [[Deleuze]] calls "blocs of sensation" (as in Deleuze's analysis of [[Francis Bacon (artist)|Francis Bacon]]). Even after his excommunication from the Surrealist group,{{Explain|date=March 2023}} while the intention of his sculpting was usually imitation, the end products were an expression of his emotional response to the subject. He attempted to create renditions of his models the way he saw them, and the way he thought they ought to be seen. He once said that he was sculpting not the human figure but "the shadow that is cast".

Philosopher [[William Barrett (philosopher)|William Barrett]] in ''[[Irrational Man|Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy]]'' (1962), argues that the attenuated forms of Giacometti's figures reflect the view of 20th century [[modernism]] and [[existentialism]] that modern life is increasingly empty and devoid of meaning.{{failed verification|reason=Barrett does indeed mention Giacometti, but it is not at all clear how this paraphrase is related to what Barrett actually says. Either replace this paraphrase with one from a reliable source or explicitly quote Barrett where he mentions Giacometti.|date=May 2025}}

A 2011–2012 exhibition at the [[Pinacothèque de Paris]] focused on showing how Giacometti was inspired by [[Etruscan art]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=GIACOMETTI ET LES ÉTRUSQUES - Pinacothèque de Paris |url=https://www.pinacotheque.com/giacometti-et-les-etrusques/ |access-date=4 July 2024 |website=Pinacothèque de Paris}}</ref>

[[File:'Cat' by Giacometti, 1954, Metropolitan Museum of Art.jpg|thumb|centre|upright 2.2|''Cat'', 1954, [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]]]]

=== ''Walking Man'' and other human figures ===

{{Quote box |align=right |width=50% |author=Alberto Giacometti |source= [https://archive.org/details/bwb_KN-447-777/page/n15/mode/2up?q=%22All+the+sculptures+of+today%22 ''Giacometti: Sculptures''] by Raoul-Jean Moulin (Methuen, 1964) |quote=
All the sculptures of today, like those of the past, will end one day in pieces...So it is important to fashion one's work carefully in its smallest recess and charge every particle of matter with life.}}

Giacometti is best known for the bronze sculptures of tall, thin human figures, made in the years 1945 to 1960.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Feigel|first=Lara|title=On the edge of madness: the terrors and genius of Alberto Giacometti|url=https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/apr/21/the-terrors-genius-of-alberto-giacometti-artist-sculptor-tate-modern|access-date=5 January 2021|website=theguardian|date=21 April 2017}}</ref> Giacometti was influenced by the impressions he took from the people hurrying in the big city. People in motion he saw as "a succession of moments of stillness".<ref>{{Cite web|title=ALBERTO GIACOMETTI FONDS HÉLÈNE & EDOUARD LECLERC|url=https://www.fondation-giacometti.fr/en/event/36/alberto-giacometti|website=Fondation-giacometti}}</ref>

The emaciated figures are often interpreted as an expression of the existential fear, insignificance and loneliness of mankind.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Walking Man |url=https://www.aaronartprints.org/giacometti-walkingman.php |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210801082752/https://www.aaronartprints.org/giacometti-walkingman.php |archive-date=1 August 2021 |access-date=5 January 2021 |website=Aaron art prints}}</ref> The mood of fear in the period of the 1940s and the Cold War is reflected in this figure. It feels sad, lonely and difficult to relate to.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Sidelnikova|first=Anna|title=Walking man II|url=https://arthive.com/albertogiacometti/works/382560~Walking_man_II|website=Arthive.com}}</ref>