Alberto Giacometti: Retrospective

Swiss-born sculptor and painter Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) is best known for the bronzes of ghostly and attenuated figures that made him a key member of the Surrealist movement. This retrospective focuses on the artist's so-called "crisis period" after 1935 and during the Second World War, which coincided with a larger critical juncture for modernism itself. In 1936, Giacometti began to concentrate his attention on the human head, focusing on the model's gaze, and eventually giving his sculptures an extruded appearance. The artist's paintings and drawings underwent a parallel transformation, his heavily reworked figures appearing increasingly emaciated and at a remove from their surroundings. Examining more than 100 key works, the contributors to this volume revisit Giacometti in the light of this "crisis period"; essays by Donat R timan, Casimiro Di Crescenzo and Thierry Dufr'ne provide reexaminations of the artist's contribution from a contemporary perspective.