Alberto Giacometti's Letters Published in New Book

A new volume titled "Il tempo passa troppo presto" collects nearly 1,550 letters written by Alberto Giacometti between 1916 and 1964, edited by Casimiro Di Crescenzo and published by Edizioni Casagrande. The letters, sent to his family in Val Bregaglia, Switzerland, form a fragmented autobiography enriched with sketches, revealing his gratitude toward art history predecessors, his visits to the Vatican Museums, the Louvre, and the Musée de l'Homme, and his admiration for Giotto, Tintoretto, African fetishes, Greek statuary, and Egyptian sculpture. The correspondence captures Giacometti's restless creative process in his Paris studio on rue Maindron, his constant doubt, and his belief that a work is never finished but a perpetual crossing. It also documents his friendships with André Masson, André Derain, Samuel Beckett, and Jean-Paul Sartre. The artist, known for his reduced, filiform sculptures like "Homme qui marche" (1960), was profoundly affected by a stranger's death beside him on a train, revealing the void and the ephemeral nature of existence.