Paris Post War

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But sculptors make statues, and can one still call by such a name the tiny - in some cases minute - works that Giacometti conceived? Never before had a sculptor used so little plaster, and in his hands sculpture seemed to become un-material. But he was as exigent as if working on the largest scale, and he expended an enormous energy in the manipulation of so little matter - for what counts in sculpture is neither the granite nor the bronze but the idea. Disdaining fame and fortune, he devoted himself to the search for a perfection of his own. He engaged in a gigantic struggle with these tiny objects.

Of this his studio still bears witness. On entering it, one is afraid of upsetting these slender, fragile creatures (really more solid than they seem), which rise from the floor, or of falling over piles of old plaster leaning against the walls and heaped high under the tables. Giacometti's atelier looks more like a demolition scene than a workshop of construction. And what palaces and what dreams have been destroyed] All this plaster was once sculpture, but dissatisfied with his work the artist stripped, dismembered, destroyed and then

remade it all. Thus this moving graveyard of statues gives evidence

of Giacometti's patient and passionate tenacity.

From 'Giacometti', by Georges Limbour, in the Magazine of Art (Washington),

November 1948.