CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 6/8/2018

Giacometti: breaking free from enforced immobility

Featured image, of Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti working in his Paris Studio in 1958, is reproduced from the catalogue to the major Giacometti show opening today at the Guggenheim. Essayist Valerie J. Fletcher cites a transformative vision experienced by the artist in a movie theater, during which he "suddenly recognized a specific idiosyncratic way of perceiving the world around him: 'I see reality for the first time but in such a way that I can make everything very rapidly… Each day I find a new thing… All those years when I made and remade those little figurines, I never dared imagine that all that would bring me such tremendous progress in Paris.' This powerful vision enabled the artist to depict figures in motion, as if breaking free from the enforced immobility of the war years."