Alberto Giacometti: Sculpture, Painting, Drawings (Art Flexi Series) [Paperback]

Angela Schneider (Author)

Book Description

Series: Art Flexi | Publication Date: September 30, 2008

While best-known for his spindly, attenuated figures,
Giacometti also created brilliant work in two dimensions. This
book offers a scholarly assessment of his entire oeuvre and
underscores the continuity between the two phases of his career:
the pre-1935 works, which included his Surrealist sculptures,
and his post-war masterpieces. It details Giacometti s artistic
crisis, when he returned to working from the model and broke
with the Surrealists, and reveals how he began tackling the
problem of situating figures in space in an entirely new way.
This book discusses the relationship between his two- and
three-dimensional works, showing Giacometti to have been as
great a painter as he was a sculptor. Featuring extraordinary
images of the artist at work, this book includes photographs by
Henri Cartier-Bresson, Ugo Mulas, and Man Ray

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

ANGELA SCHNEIDER is Curator of Twentieth Century Art at the
Nationalgalerie in Berlin.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Prestel USA (September 30, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3791338714
• ISBN-13: 978-3791338712
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,240,165 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Nice overview of a tremendous artist, April 20, 2009

By 

M. Lannstrom (Sweden) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Alberto Giacometti: Sculpture, Painting, Drawings (Art Flexi Series) (Paperback)

I've always been a fan of Giacomettis but he's one of those artists there's not much written about. Perhaps there just isn't any more information, and if that's the case, I might be judging this book too harshly.

Schneider starts off by telling us about Albertos childhood and early life. Alberto is one of the few successful artists who actually had a happy childhood. His father, Giovanni Giacometti, introduced him to art at a very early age, being a painter himself, and in school Alberto impressed fellow pupils as well as his teachers with his artistic skills. He studied together with Bror Hjorth in Paris, where he would later settle down. And Angels then keeps telling us, in a very factual way, about Giacomettis life until the day he passed away.

The book is full of beautiful black and white photographs, on Alberto as well as on his work, studio and family and often they cover the entire pages. And they take up around two thirds of the book. I find that the text get to suffer from this, not only in quantity but also in quality.

I'd imagine it'd be great if you're just getting to know about Giacometti and want to see his artwork, but if you, like me, want to get deeper, to get to know about the man and the time in which he lived, you'll be out of luck.

It's still a good book. I just think that with a little more heart, it could've been great.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Bargain, August 15, 2009

By 

Short Bald Yogi (Tulsa, OK) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Alberto Giacometti: Sculpture, Painting, Drawings (Art Flexi Series) (Paperback)

First off, I would say that for 12.00, this book is an incredible buy, and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a quick primer on the artist. The author writes in a very dry, "just the facts", style that neither adds or subtracts from the information given. There is little editorializing in the pages describing Giacometti's life; that is saved for a series of essays later in the book. The obvious flaw with this book is that most of the plates are in black and white. But again, given it's reasonable price, the plates are adequate.

In my humble opinion, Giacometti, best known for his sculpture, could probably have had an equally great career as a painter. In self-criticism, he compared his portraits to those of Bacon, but in reality they are just as revealing and well executed.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Giacometti: full view, March 1, 2009

By 

Luz Estela (PR) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Alberto Giacometti: Sculpture, Painting, Drawings (Art Flexi Series) (Paperback)

This is a complete work that let you know the life and work of this extraordinary sculptor