Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) Swiss, Etching. Titled 'The Search'. 1960's Etching. Overall Size: 18 x 14 in. Sight Size: 10 x 8 in. #1172 . Alberto Giacometti is known for Surreal elongated figural sculpture, painting. The son of Swiss impressionist painter Giovanni Giacometti, he was born in Stampa in the Bregaglia Valley. He displayed a talent for painting and sculpture at an early age and with his father's guidance he made his earliest drawings, paintings and sculpture using his family for models. By age ten he had progressed from a simple illustration of Snow White to a detailed copy of Rembrandt's Good Samaritan. His first bust, made when he was just thirteen, was of his younger brother, Diego, who would become his lifelong assistant. Giacometti's extremely personal conception of space and figuration matured after the Second World War and he developed still further his elongated and isolated figures with a suggestion of existentialist tragedy, skeletal and emaciated groups which created their own spatial environment in a unique way. Between 1940 and 1945 he produced works on a miniature scale which nevertheless created a symbolic impression of magnitude.