Giacometti: A Biography

ISBN: 0374161984

Author: Lord, James

Condition: Used

Product DescriptionThe results of intensive research into the life and work of Alberto Giacometti is complemented by the author's personal remembrances of his experiences with the artist and sculptor and many members of his entourageExcerpt. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.GiacomettiOne1901-19221The Bregaglia Valley lies deep in a cleft of southeastern Switzerland. A meeting place between north and south, a place much traveled through since Roman days, it has nevertheless retained a character all its own. A telling evidence of this is the religion of Bregaglia's inhabitants, sternly Protestant amid surrounding Catholics. From the foot of the Maloja Pass the valley slopes steeply downward to the Italian frontier at Castasegna, a distance of twelve miles. It is a region of precipitous slopes, jagged peaks, icy streams, high meadows, and simple villages. Beautiful but austere. Before winter's snows first fall to the valley floor, the sun leaves it. From early November till mid-February, the sheer mountain walls cut off all sunlight, and the coldest time of day or night is high noon, when fiercest cold is driven down to the frost-encrusted depths."It's a sort of purgatory," Diego sometimes said.However that may be, it was there that everything began for the sculptor and painter Alberto Giacometti. It was there that circumstances led him to become an artist, there that they assumed their fullest meaning, there that the allegory of his life pointed its most profound and valuable moral.Life in Bregaglia was hard in the years before electricity and automobiles. Amenities were few, pleasures rare. The local men frequently left home to seek their fortune in less trying climates. If they often went away, they usually came back sooner or later, either for good or for regular visits. Austere and rigorous as it may be, and perhaps for that very reason, there is something about the valley which attaches itself to men's hearts and so dwells in their mind's eye that other places seem insipid by comparison. Therefore, it was not unnatural, after a stay in Warsaw and another inBergamo, that a young fellow named Alberto Giacometti returned about 1860 to the small Bregaglia village of Stampa. And there, on the 15th of November 1863, he married a girl named Ottilia Santi.The Giacometti family had by then been a long time in the valley, having come originally from somewhere in central Italy, where the name is a common one. Prosperity, however, had so far eluded the Giacomettis. The Santis, on the other hand, were people of substance. Ottilia brought with her in marriage the prospect of material as well as emotional security. Among other things, her family owned the inn at Stampa, named after a ten-thousand-foot peak which dominates the northern side of the valley: the Piz Duan. Ottilia's husband became the innkeeper.Whatever may have been his ability in other respects, Giacometti was a potent husband. He fathered eight children, of whom seven were males. The third of these, a son, born on March 7, 1868, was named Giovanni. He grew up to be a gentle, pensive boy and early showed an interest in drawing. While at school, he came to feel that he would like to be an artist. The innkeeper encouraged his son in this ambition, helped him with money when possible, and sent him to study in Paris.Giovanni Giacometti was a man of medium height, robust, with red hair and beard, and blue eyes. Gentle, sensitive, sincere, he liked other people and was liked by them. His work resembles him. Neither adventuresome nor innovative, yet it shows spirit and imagination. His paintings are still pleasing today because he looked with incorruptible pleasure at life, and they have a certain nobility because he had.The start of his career was beset by difficulty and hardship. His father helped occasionally if he could, but there were days when Giovanni went hungry. Having finished his studies in Paris, he went to Italy and stayed some time in a town on th