Alberto Giacometti at the Tate Modern in July 2017
Alberto Giacometti at the Tate Modern, Sunday July 16 th 2017 Born in Italian Switzerland in 1901, Alberto Giacometti was the son of a significant post-impressionist artist and much of his early work was imitative of his father’s style. He was later galvanised to move to Paris in 1922 where he encountered the works of the cubists and the surrealists. His early busts are conventional, typical works, completely classical in impulse. He liked to work with soft, malleable materials like clay or plaster rather than in bronze. However, he eventually found the financial help he needed to transform his works into bronzes. His later style emerged gradually. In his early period Giacometti was equally a painter and a sculptor, his busts were usually intimate portraits of close friends and family members. Giacometti’s engagement with the surrealists is clearly reflected in his work of the 20s and 30s in Paris when he also became fascinated with the creation of mechanical sculptures