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
Alberto Giacometti has long been recognized as one of the most original artists of the last century, producing not just the sculptures for which he is best known, but also remarkable paintings, drawings, and lithographs. Yves Bonnefoy's groundbreaking monograph, first published in 1991, reveals the psychological and intellectural context of Giacometti's artistic output, while at the same time providing key interpretations of individual works. Available for the first time in paperback, this richly illustrated, scholarly study remains a seminal work on the artist and his era, raising issues central to the understanding of twentieth-century art as a whole.



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. He published his first volume of poems, Du Mouvement et de l'immobilité de Douve, in 1953. He has also written numerous essays, including Rome 1630, L'Improbable, L'Arrière-pays and Entretiens su la poésie, and has translated Shakespeare and Yeats into French. Many of his poetic works have been translated into English (In the Shadow's Light, 1990; New and Selected Poems, 1996) along with a number of his essays (The Act and the Place of Poetry, 1989; The Lure and Truth of Painting, 1995), all published by the University of Chicago Press. 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 Collège de France, and is a doctor honoris causa at various universities, including the University of Chicago.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

One of the most profoundly original artists of the 20th century is profiled in a major critical biography.

Other Details: 600 illustrations, 200 in full color 560 pages 9 1/2 x 9 1/2" Published 1993