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.

Later years

In 1958 Giacometti was asked to create a monumental sculpture for the Chase Manhattan Bank building in New York which was beginning construction. Even when he had achieved popularity and his work was in demand he still reworked models often destroying them or setting them aside to be returned to years later. Michael Peppiatt in a lecture at Cambridge University on July 8 2010 Giacometti who had a friendship with author/playwright Samuel Beckett created a tree for the set of a 1961 Paris production of "Waiting For Godot".

Alberto Giacometti (Italian pronunciation: [alˈbɛrto dʒakoˈmetti]; 10 October 1901 – 11 January 1966) was a Swiss sculptor painter draughtsman and printmaker. Alberto Giacometti was born in the canton Graubünden's southerly alpine valley Val Bregaglia and came from an artistic background; his father Giovanni was a well-known post-Impressionist painter.