black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

When I make my drawings… the path traced by my pencil on the sheet of paper is, to some extent, analogous to the gesture of a man groping his way in the darkness.

Alberto Giacometti

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
I’ve tried doing so, for it was never my intention to paint only with gray. But in the course of my work I have eliminated one color after another, and what has remained is gray, gray, gray!
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Color Course Elimination Intention Myself Paint Work
When one lives with problems of importance, the prostitute is ideal. You pay, and whether or not you fail is of no importance. She doesn’t care.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Care Failure Importance Live Problem Prostitution Yourself
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
The one thing that fills me with enthusiasm is to try, despite everything, to get nearer to those visions that seem so hard to express.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Enthusiasm Expression Hard Oneself Vision
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
I paint and sculpt to get a grip on reality… to protect myself.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Myself Paint Protection Reality Sculpture
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
It was always disappointing to see that what I could really master in terms of form boiled down to so little.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Disappoint Master Myself See
The form is always the measure of the obsession.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Form Measurement Obsession
All the art of the past rises up before me, the art of all ages and all civilizations, everything becomes simultaneous, as if space had replaced time. Memories of works of art blend with affective memories, with my work, with my whole life.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Art Civilization Life Memories Myself Past Replacement Rise Space Work
All I can do will only ever be a faint image of what I see and my success will always be less than my failure or perhaps equal to the failure.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Equality Failure Image Myself Success Willing
The older I grow, the more I find myself alone.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Alone Finding Growth Myself Old
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 see something, find it marvelous, want to try and do it. Whether it fails or whether it comes off in the end becomes secondary. So long as I’ve learned something about why.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

End Failure Learning Myself See Try
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
The more I work, the more I see things differently, that is, everything gains in grandeur every day, becomes more and more unknown, more and more beautiful. The closer I come, the grander it is, the more remote it is.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Beautiful Day Different Myself Work
If I see everything in gray, and in gray all the colors which I experience and which I would like to reproduce, then why should I use any other color?
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Color Myself Reproduction See
When you look at art made by other people, you see what you need to see in it.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Art Need People See Yourself
Art is the residue of vision.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Art One Liner Residue Vision
In a burning building I would save a cat before a Rembrandt.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Animal Building Burning Choice Myself Save
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
The human face is as strange to me as a countenance, which, the more one looks at it, the more it closes itself off and escapes by the steps of unknown stairways.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Escape Face Human Oneself Strange Unknown
The more you fail, the more you succeed. It is only when everything is lost and – instead of giving up – you go on, that you experience the momentary prospect of some slight progress. Suddenly you have the feeling – be it an illusion or not – that something new has opened up.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Experience Failure Feeling Give Up Lost Moments Open Progress Success Yourself
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
Whores are the most honest girls. They present the bill right away.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Honesty Prostitution Sex Woman
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

When I make my drawings… the path traced by my pencil on the sheet of paper is, to some extent, analogous to the gesture of a man groping his way in the darkness.

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When I make my drawings… the path traced by my pencil on the sheet of paper is, to some extent, analogous to the gesture of a man groping his way in the darkness.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Alberto Giacometti Quotes