Themes and motifs across the influential career of the great Swiss sculptor, from Surrealism to the iconic, etiolated figures of the postwar era

This catalog for a retrospective of the work of the sculptor and painter Alberto Giacometti (1901–66) appraises all of the artist’s periods and mediums, from sculpture (plaster, bronze) to painting, drawings and prints, and from early works of the Surrealist period, to his return to figuration, his work from models and the creation of the great postwar sculptures for which he is legendary.

Giacometti’s oeuvre is divided into 14 sections exploring the themes favored by the artist, such as the representation of the head, the face or the female body. The book is punctuated by seven essays written by leading art historians who address the preoccupations that mark Giacometti’s creative process, while also dwelling on his experiences of loneliness and melancholy, and his work with his models―his wife Annette, his brother Diego and his close friends.