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Giacometti, photograph by Yousuf Karsh, 1965 (credit: Karsh — Rapho/Photo Researchers)

(born Oct. 10, 1901, Borgonovo, Switz. — died Jan. 11, 1966, Chur) Swiss sculptor and painter. His father was a Post-Impressionist painter, and his brother Diego was a well-known furniture designer. After studying art in Geneva (1919 – 20) and Paris (1922 – 25), he developed a style related to the Cubist sculpture of Alexander Archipenko and the post-Cubist work of Jacques Lipchitz. His work also showed the influence of African and Oceanic art. After experimenting with abstraction in the 1930s, he became increasingly focused on finding ways to capture a sense of reality in sculpture. For Giacometti an artwork was to become an almost existential evocation of reality. By the 1940s he had developed his signature style, producing thin, attenuated sculptures of solitary, skeletal figures and heads. He became well known, especially in the U.S., through two exhibitions in New York City (1948, 1950) and an essay on his art by Jean-Paul Sartre. In 1963 he designed a stage set for a production of a Samuel Beckett play.

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