Alberto Giacometti

To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Verlag Scheidegger & Spiess, Alberto Giacometti: Traces of a Friendship is being published in a completely revised and expanded edition, which includes more than sixty previously unpublished photographs and an intimate new chapter.

Alberto Giacometti (1901–66) is inarguably one of the greatest sculptors of the twentieth century. Immensely gifted and prolific, he gave physical expression to his twin obsessions of the human form and the alienation of modern life. Despite his canonical position in the history of art and the reams of scholarship produced about him, Giacometti remains to many the elusive master artist, distant and remote on the Olympus of creative endeavor.

Ernst Scheidegger, a friend of the sculptor, knew a very different Giacometti. Scheidegger accompanied him to his studio, ate and drank with him, and relaxed with him in his family home. Alberto Giacometti: Traces of a Friendship documents his friendship with Giacometti, through photographs that Scheidegger took over the course of two decades. Scheidegger welcomes readers into Giacometti’s studio and house in Maloja, Switzerland, allowing them rare access to the most closely held aspects of the artist’s life. From the artist sketching in his studio or having a cup of coffee to his works in progress and art in installation to even his sleeping cats, Scheidegger captures the essence of the artist’s working life in images that are artful in their own right.