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 GIACOMETTIIn 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.
More Alberto Giacometti Quotes
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Whores are the most honest girls. They present the bill right away.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI -
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 -
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 -
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 -
I paint and sculpt to get a grip on reality… to protect myself.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI -
Only reality interests me now and I know I could spend the rest of my life in copying a chair.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI -
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 -
I’ve been fifty thousand times to the Louvre. I have copied everything in drawing, trying to understand.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI -
If we master a bit of drawing, everything else is possible.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI -
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 -
In a burning building I would save a cat before a Rembrandt.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI -
Failure is my best friend. If I succeeded, it would be like dying. Maybe worse.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI -
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 -
The older I grow, the more I find myself alone.
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






