black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

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
In a fire, between a Rembrandt and a cat, I would save the cat.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Animal Cat Choice Dangerous Myself Save
When I see a head from a great distance, it ceases to be a sphere and becomes an extreme confusion falling down into the abyss.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Confusion Distance Greatness Head Myself
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
The older I grow, the more I find myself alone.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Alone Finding Growth Myself Old
I’ve been fifty thousand times to the Louvre. I have copied everything in drawing, trying to understand.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Drawing Myself Time Understand
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
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
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
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
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 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 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
Art is the residue of vision.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Art One Liner Residue Vision
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
I don’t know if I work in order to do something, or in order to know why I can’t do what I want to do.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Myself Reason Work
In a burning building I would save a cat before a Rembrandt.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Animal Building Burning Choice Myself Save
The form is always the measure of the obsession.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Form Measurement Obsession
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
If we master a bit of drawing, everything else is possible.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Drawing Master Possible Potential
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Alberto Giacometti Quotes