Giacometti in Paris

Giacometti was one of the greatest sculptors of the twentieth century. His works are still exhibited at major galleries all around the world and he sold the two most expensive works of sculpture in history. After Francis Bacon, Giacometti is the subject about which Michael Peppiatt knows most.

Michael Peppiatt has been writing about art and artists since 1964, when he began reviewing exhibitions for the Observer while still a student. He left London for a job as arts editor at Réalités then Le Monde in Paris, where he lived at the heart of the art and literary world for the following thirty years, becoming cultural correspondent for the New York Times and, in 1985, owner and publisher of Art International. Peppiatt is the author of a dozen books, including Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma, In Giacometti's Studio and the acclaimed memoir Francis Bacon in Your Blood.

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
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
This book is not only a wonderful portrait of Giacometti, but also of many of his friends and associates. Peppiatt is at home in the whole Paris cultural scene and hops merrily from La Coupole to Les Deux Magots to Café Flore, picking up fascinating details along the way
This book is an elegy for two missed things: an artist feted as a genius and the city he chose to live in . . . Giacometti in Paris is rich in anecdotage
An elegant, authoritative biography - Peppiatt knows his artistic onions, to be sure
Peppiatt's telling of Giacometti's story is insightful and sprightly . . . Paris in the années folles is atmospherically rendered, the scene-painting lively and louche
Personal and appealingly painterly, this is an immensely readable biography of the man and the city
[A] vibrant, new account . . . This is a book composed with love, a deep, affectionate admiration for its remarkable if elusive subject. Mr Peppiatt also writes with considerable authority'
Informative, affective, and vibrant . . . Giacometti in Paris is, then, a book as much about the triumphs and the dangers of obsession as anything else
Giacometti's beanpole people became icons of 20th-century art and Michael Peppiatt's compelling portrait cuts to the core of the sculptor's "strange life and his stranger fame" . . . Appalling and fascinating. You'll never look at a Giacometti the same way