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I paint and sculpt to get a grip on reality… to protect myself.

Alberto Giacometti

Taste for things of the past evolves, doesn’t it? What was a masterpiece a hundred years ago is no longer so today.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Evolution Ourselves Past Pieces Taste
Only reality interests me now and I know I could spend the rest of my life in copying a chair.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Chair Copy Interest Myself Reality
In every work of art the subject is primordial, whether the artist knows it or not. The measure of the formal qualities is only a sign of the measure of the artist’s obsession with his subject; the form is always in proportion to the obsession.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Art Himself Measurement Obsession Subject Work
I don’t know who I am or who I was. I know it less than ever. I do and I don’t identify myself with myself. Everything is totally contradictory, but maybe I have remained exactly as I was as a small boy of twelve.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Age Contradict Identify Myself Remain
It is impossible to do a thing the way I see it because the closer I get the more differently I see.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Close Different Impossible Myself See
Failure is my best friend. If I succeeded, it would be like dying. Maybe worse.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Failure Friendship Myself Success Worst
The head is what matters. The rest of the body plays the part of antennae making life possible for people and life itself is inside the skull.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Body Head Life Play Possible Skull
The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Art Intensity Object Reality Reproduction
If we master a bit of drawing, everything else is possible.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Drawing Master Possible Potential
In a fire, between a Rembrandt and a cat, I would save the cat.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Animal Cat Choice Dangerous Myself Save
All the sculptures of today, like those of the past, will end one day in pieces… So it is important to fashion ones work carefully in its smallest recess and charge every particle of matter with life.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Care Fashion Life Oneself Past Pieces Work
What I am looking for is not happiness. I work solely because it is impossible for me to do anything else.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Happiness Impossible Myself Work
That’s the terrible thing: the more one works on a picture, the more impossible it becomes to finish it.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Impossible Oneself Picture Terrible Work
At first, one sees the person who is modelling; but little by little, all of the possible sculptures that could be made come between artist and model.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Artist Modeling Myself Person Possible Sculpture
Once the object has been constructed, I have a tendency to rediscover in it, transformed and displaced, images, impressions, facts which have deeply moved me (often without my knowing it).
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Discover Image Known Myself Object Transformation
Artistically I am still a child with a whole life ahead of me to discover and create. I want something, but I won’t know what it is until I succeed in doing it.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Artistic Children Creation Discover Myself Success

I paint and sculpt to get a grip on reality… to protect myself.

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I paint and sculpt to get a grip on reality… to protect myself.

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