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THE TIMES AND WATERSTONES BEST ART BOOK OF 2023
‘Marvellous . . . intimate and insightful . . . reads like a novel by Samuel Beckett’ Paul Theroux
A portrait of one of the twentieth century’s greatest sculptors from one of our most eminent art historians

Today the work of Alberto Giacometti is world-famous and his sculptures sell for record-breaking prices. But from his early days as an unknown outsider to the end of a dramatic international career, Giacometti lived in the same hovel of a studio in Paris. It was Paris that made him, and he in turn immortalised the city through his art.

Arriving in Paris from the Swiss Alps in 1922, Giacometti was shaped not only by his relationships with remarkable artists and writers – from Picasso, Breton and Dali to Sartre, Beauvoir and Beckett – but by the everyday life, pre-war and post-war, of Paris itself. His distinctive figures emerged from the city’s unique atmosphere: the crumbling grey stone of its humbler streets and the cafe-terraces buzzing with radical ideas and racy gossip.

In Giacometti in Paris, Michael Peppiatt, who spent thirty years documenting the Parisian art world and mixing with many of the people Giacometti knew, brilliantly charts the course of the artist’s life and work. From falling in and out with the Surrealists to years of artistic anguish, from devotion to his mother to intense friendships, tragic love affairs and a fraught marriage, this is an intimate portrait of an outstanding artist in exceptional times.

Publisher Review

This is a marvellous book, an intimate and insightful account of the life and work of the uncompromising Giacometti - perverse in every sense and an artistic genius. It reads like a novel, indeed a novel by Samuel Beckett, who happened to be one of his friends and a man he much resembled -- Paul Theroux We are given Giacometti's world in all its fascinating detail and humanity, the inhospitable and improbable studio that became iconic, installation art, before the term was invented, the friendships, relationships that were navigated and were influential, the moments of satori in a Paris cinema and the times of doubt and recalibration. It's all here in memorable and readable form like privileged, intelligent conversation. Michael Peppiatt's achievement is to never lose sight of the man in confronting the titanic artist that Giacometti was. -- Hughie O'Donoghue PRAISE FOR MICHAEL PEPPIATT: Michael Peppiatt is probably one of the most eminent art writers of our time -- Tim Smith-Laing * Sunday Telegraph * PRAISE FOR FRANCIS BACON IN YOUR BLOOD: Remarkable ... It captures what it was like to be in the presence of this brilliant, camp, reckless, waspish, drunken, generous, shameless character. -- Craig Brown * The Mail on Sunday * PRAISE FOR THE EXISTENTIAL ENGLISHMAN: If you're interested in art, or writing, or Paris, it will ring bells in your head. I loved it. -- William Leith * Evening Standard *