ALBERTO GIACOMETTI - The genius that manifests itself through art

The cultural insert of the Exercise Report is dedicated to Alberto Giacometti, a famous painter and sculptor.

Alberto begins to draw already in the very first years of his childhood. In 1913 he painted his first oil painting and shortly after he modeled the first sculptures, the heads of his brothers Diego and Andrea Garbald. The atelier of his father is a cradle that makes him grow with extreme naturalness in the world of art and the works of the "novice gifted by nature" testify to his extraordinary talent - moreover actively encouraged by his father - already at a very young age.

At the same time, ASI assiduously trains by copying masterpieces, a habit that it will maintain throughout life. Between his father, a valued post-impressionist painter to whom we owe the advent of "bright color" in Swiss art, and the son develops a relationship of mutual giving and having, an intense artistic relationship.

During his school years, at the Evangelical Institute in Schiers in Prettigo, Via (1915-1919), Alberto realized, in addition to drawings and watercolors, also oil paintings and small plastic works, including the heads of the mother and of the companion of Simon Bérard school. A Stampa instead draws the spaces familiar to him, the mother intent on cooking, the family gathered at the table and her father.

Although in the «enfant prodige phase» Alberto emulates his father, his early works demonstrate a wonderful virtuosity in capturing the observed reality. The insistent drawing of the surrounding environment will later become a custom. Already then the attention of Alberto was not addressed so much to the reason, as to the underlying artistic problem: how do things seen at a distance behave in relation to the space that surrounds them?