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The Artist

1901 Alberto Giacometti born 10 October at Borgonova near Stampa, in the Bregaglia Valley, Switzerland.

1913 Giacometti begins to paint and in 1914 begins to model portrait busts.

1919-20 Attends the École des Beaux-Arts, Geneva, for six months.

1920-21 Travels in Italy and studied in Rome.

1922-27 Moves to Paris to study at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière with Rodin's successor, Emil-Antoine Bourdelle.

1927 Alberto and his younger brother, Diego, move into a small, spartan studio at 46 rue Hippolyte-Maindron, Montparnasse where they remain permanently.

1928 Establishes strong links with the Surrealists.

1930 Designs and fabricates decorative objects with Diego for the interior designer Jean-Michel Frank.

1933-35 Giacometti distances himself from the Surrealists and begins to work from the model. Apart from Diego, his most important model at this time is Isabel Delmer. He remains extremely dissatisfied with his work and scarcely exhibits.

1939 Knocked down in the street by a car, and left with a limp after an operation. Pablo Picasso, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir become close friends.

1942-46 Begins to work from memory rather than from a model. Giacometti spends the war years in Geneva and produces miniscule figures. 

1946 Returns to Paris where his sculptures begin to attract wide attention. The life-sized figures that Giacometti begins to produce in the late 1940s mark the beginning of his mature style for which he will become best known.

1949 Marries Annette Arm whom he met in Geneva in 1943. 

1954 Returns to making sculpture and portrait busts from life. Paints and draws portraits of Diego, Annette, Jean Genet, James Lord and other acquaintances.

1956 Exhibits the Women of Venice series in the French pavilion at the Venice Biennale in June. Travels to Bern for a retrospective exhibition at the Kunsthalle.

1962 Solo exhibition at the Venice Biennale. Awarded the grand prize for sculpture.

1965 Major retrospective at the Tate Gallery, London and a simultaneous retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

1966 Giacometti dies early in January, in Chur, Switzerland.