Anca Visdei has worked as a journalist in Switzerland, then in Paris where she currently lives. A playwright, novelist, director, she is also the author of biographies, notably that of Jean Anouilh, whom she met in the 1980s.
Giacometti, creation, between asceticism and passion
On 21 June 2018 the Institut Giacometti opened in Paris; it reproduces the artist’s studio, the creative space where Alberto Giacometti spent the greatest part of his life. In 2010 and 2015, the auctions for Walking Man then Man Pointing reached unheard-of prices for works of sculpture. But behind those extraordinary sums for the works of one of the most important artists of the twentieth century, who was the man?

To write her book, Anca Visdei set off in footsteps of Alberto Giacometti. To the Val Bregalglia in Swizerland, where he grew up with his painter father and his mother, a powerful maternal figure; to Venice where he studied; then to Paris where he engaged in one of the most prolific periods of his artistic life.

Never-before-heard accounts (by his friends, his dealers, his lawyers), excerpts from his correspondence with his doctors, an exploration of his work – sculptures, decorative pieces, drawings – are all part of this captivating narrative. In it we discover the personality of a man full of great contrasts who continually “showed things as he saw them,” that is, showed the man he was in all men. A fascinating voyage into the life and work of Alberto Giacometti.