In Giacometti's Studio

Art critic, editor, and curator Peppiatt's enduring fascination with Alberto Giacometti began when Peppiatt was a young man in 1966, when he arrived in Paris with an introduction from Francis Bacon only to find that the great sculptor had just died. Centering his study on the tiny rue Hippolyte-Maindron studio in Montparnasse, Peppiatt passionately presents his subject's chaotic and harsh life, tormented personality and family life, surrealist influences and milieu, drawings and paintings, sculptures large and small, slow success and exhibitions, friendships with literary figures such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Samuel Beckett, and famous monumental subtractive sculptures. A magnet for artists and intellectuals, the studio he occupied for 40 years is hailed as his most important and tangible achievement. Dismantled in the early 1970s, a partial reconstruction with salvaged wall murals was shown at the Centre Pompidou retrospective in 2007.