In its heyday LIFE magazine introduced a great many artists to the country at large. Perhaps the most famous instance of this was its star-making profile of Jackson Pollock, but there are many other examples.
In 1951 LIFE showcased the sculptor Alberto Giacometti. Like Pollock, Giacometti’s works were instantly recognizable. His style was bluntly captured in LIFE’s headline: “Skeletal Sculpture: Artist Whittles Men to Bone.”
The story described how Giacometti arrived what it called his ‘stalagmatic style”:
Sculptor Giacometti, son of Switzerland’s foremost impressionist painter, started out 30 years ago producing conventional statues. But he lost his way among the innumerable details of the head and body which seemed to clutter up and conceal the underlying form of human beings. “I felt I needed to realize the whole,” he says. “A structure, a sharpness….a kind of skeleton in space.” To arrive at this “essence of man,” Giacometti gradually reduced his figures to pin size, then gradually stretched them out again to pipeline silhouettes whose slender fragility suggests the perishable nature of man himself.
For that story Giacometti posed for legendary LIFE staff photographer Gordon Parks. The meeting of these two artists resulted in one of the most popular images for sale in the LIFE photo store.
That image is part of this gallery, as are several other frames that Parks took of Giacometti and of his work. Also included here is a photo of a Giacometti work taken by Yale Joel that cropped up in the background of a LIFE story from 1960 about art collector G. David Thompson. He was one of the most prominent art collectors of the 20th century, and he owned 70 works by Giacometti.
Alberto Giacometti in his studio, surrounded by his sculptures, 1951.
Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Sculptor Alberto Giacometti in Paris, 1951.
Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti, 1951.
Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti in his studio, 1951.
Gordon Parks.Life PIcture Collection/Shutterstock
Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti, surrounded by sculptures in his studio, 1951.
Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
A Giacometti sculpture on a Parisian street, 1951.
Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
These Giacometti animal sculptures lived not far from Giacometti’s Paris studio, 1951.
Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Sculptor Alberto Giacometti, 1951.
Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Art collector G. David Thompson, 1959, with a Giacometti sculpture; he owned 70 works by the artist.
Yale Joel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
