From Library Journal
One of the most universally admired artists of the 20th century, the Swiss-born sculptor/painter Alberto Giacometti (1901-66) is best known for a series of bronzes depicting ghostly, attenuated figures made during a burst of intense creative activity inspired partly by the cataclysmic events of World War II. The largest retrospective of Giacometti's work ever mounted almost 200 individual sculptures, paintings, and drawings, shown at Zurich's Kunsthaus and New York's MoMA has generated Klemm's fine catalog, the best book on this major figure to have appeared since James Lord's definitive Giacometti: A Biography (Noonday, 1997. reprint.). In addition to the aforementioned sculptures, Kunsthaus curator Klemm has assembled a farrago of this artist's eclectic accomplishments, from his early eminence among the Parisian Surrealists onward. Worth the entire cover price is the handful of pages depicting the astonishingly agile still-life drawings from the artist's productive mid-century years. An excellent and deeply inspiring book true to its subject; recommended for all art collections. Also timed to coincide with the exhibition is the publication of an elegantly packaged, slipcased set of two thin monographs profiling Alberto and his lesser-known sibling, Diego (1902-85), a designer of furniture and objets d'art and the metal smith who cast many of his brother's major bronzes. Identical in format and size, these books are primarily a conglomeration of a few dozen photos of artwork alongside short introductory biocritical essays and brief chronologies. Next to Klemm's hefty volume, each of these works feels more like a repackaged article from a glossy art journal, suitable as an attractive gift book but providing little for most library users. Nonetheless, as the only title currently available on the younger Giacometti, the set can be recommended for more comprehensive collections. Douglas F. Smith, Oakland P.L. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Book Description
Although Alberto Giacometti has long been recognized as one of the most original artists of the twentieth century, his life and work have not been the subject of a large illustrated monograph for many years. Yves Bonnefoy, poet, essayist and friend of the artist, has been reflecting on Giacometti's work since their first meeting, and began working on this book in 1981 while giving a series of lectures at the College de France. Yves Bonnefoy examines the entire range of Giacometti's creative production: sculpture, painting, drawing, which was the basis of the artist's work, and his lithographs-among the finest produced in this century. By focusing on the works of art themselves rather than on the details of the artist's life, and by relying on the evidence of Giacometti's important writings and statements, the author reveals the psychological and intellectual context of Giacometti's inspiration, and provides a wealth of new interpretations of his drawings, canvases and sculptures.

Giacometti's early artistic development within his family circle, the impact of his voyages to Italy, the nature of his early apprenticeship in Antoine Bourdelle's studio in Paris, and his interest in African and Oceanian arts are traced with the help of contemporary accounts. Bonnefoy attributes great importance to Georges Bataille's thinking-re-evaluated here-and its influence on Giacometti's work, together with that of surrealism and the ideas of Andre Breton, whose relationship with the artist is analyzed. The periods that constituted the most significant moments of Giacometti's life are explored, especially his return to the study of the human figure in 1935, the Walking Man series in 1947, and the period of his study of 'heads' both in painting and sculpture during the 1950s. Bonnefoy's reflection on Giacometti's creative world leads him to raise important questions about the secret and profound relationship that an artist born in the mountains maintained with light, one that Giacometti sought to relive through his emotive landscapes.

In writing Alberto Giacometti: A Biography of His Work Yves Bonnefoy benefited from documentary and photographic assistance from Annette Giacometti and other members of the artist's family, friends, and the galleries that exhibited his work. This study, therefore, evokes not only Giacometti's oeuvre, but also his childhood and later environment, his studios and the works that were important to him.

Bonnefoy's penetrating analysis of Giacometti's work throws much new light on issues central to the understanding of twentieth-century art as a whole. Accompanied by an extensive biographical chronology and bibliography and illustrated with nearly 60 works and documents, many of which are published here for the first time, this monograph will remain an essential for years to come.



About the Author
Born in Tours in 1923, Yves Bonnefoy graduated in history of science and philosophy. He is first and foremost, however, a writer, and has devoted himself primarily to the analysis of poetry and art. In 1953, he published his first volume of poems, Du Mouvement et de l'immobilite de Douve, and he has just published his sixth volume, Ebut et fin de la neige. He has also written numerous essays, including Rome 1630, L'Improbable, l'Arriere-Pays, Entretiens sur la poesie, and has translated Shakespeare and Yeats into French. Many of his poetic works have been translated into English (his most recent is In the Shadow's Light, University of Chicago Press, 1990) along with a number of his essays ("The Act and the Place of Poetry', 'The Lure and Truth of Painting'). He was awarded the Prix Montaigne in 1978 and the Bennett Award in New York in 1988. He has been invited to teach at numerous American universities, among them Yale, Princeton, the University of California and City University, New York. He was elected in 1981 to a Chair of Comparative Poetry at the College de France. He is a doctor honoris causa at various universities, including the University of Chicago.

FROM THE PUBLISHER