Alberto Giacometti in the Prado

Among the activities to mark its Bicentenary, the Museo del Prado is intending to emphasise its role as a place of inspiration for the great masters of the 20th century with the work of an artist who has never visited the Museum. The exhibition will be curated by Carmen Giménez, Stephen and Nan Swid Curator of 20th Century Art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and with a special collaboration of Beyeler Foundation from Basel and support from Comunidad de Madrid.

Alberto Giacometti (Borgonovo, Switzerland, 1901 - 1966, Coira, Switzerland) was born into an artistic surrounding to father, Giovanni, who was a well-known post-Impressionist painter. He attended Fine Arts School in Geneva before he moved to Paris to to study under the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle at the Grand Chaumière Academy.

In the early 40s he started to developed his characteristic style asking philosophical questions about the human condition, as well as existential and phenomenological debates. Becoming more interested in how to represent the human figure in a convincing illusion of real space, he wanted to depict figures in such a way as to capture a palpable sense of spatial distance. The solution he arrived at involved whittling the figures down to the slenderest proportions.

Although the 1950s art world was dominated by abstract painting, Giacometti’s figurative sculpture came to be a hugely influential model of how the human figure might return to art. His figures represented human beings alone in the world, turned in on themselves and failing to communicate with their fellows, despite their overwhelming desire to reach out.