Alberto Giacometti: Toward the Ultimate Figure ends October 9 at the Seattle Art Museum and then departs for the next stop on its national tour. The major retrospective takes you inside the mind and life of the iconic modern artist who tirelessly pursued his unique vision of the human form. You’ll see over 100 bronze portrait busts, towering statuettes, paintings, sketches, and prints, as well as scenes from his famed Paris studio captured by noted photographers including Richard Avedon, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau, Gordon Parks, and Irving Penn. This larger-than-life personality led an intriguing life. Here are 10 fascinating facts about the man behind the art.

Did you know?:

1. Giacometti grew up in a small village in the Swiss Alps near the Italian border and went on to become one of Switzerland’s most celebrated artists.
2. He moved to Paris in the 1920s, living and working in the same cramped, humble studio overflowing with sculptures for his entire career.
3. As a young man, Giacometti became fascinated by Egyptian and African art and thought non-Western artists were the most avant-garde of all. He was so taken, he bought a Kota reliquary figure similar to the one in SAM’s collection that is currently on view in the exhibition.
4. During the war, he left Paris, first trying to reach Switzerland unsuccessfully by bicycle. He arrived there in 1942, while his brother Diego remained in Paris for the duration of the conflict and kept the studio.
5. In contrast to his solitary sculptures, the artist was a vivacious conversationalist who developed and refined his ideas in dialogues with friends, often in Paris cafés.
6. Giacometti became friends with the playwright Samuel Beckett in 1937, and they were known to wander the streets of Paris all night long in conversation. They collaborated on the set for the 1961 production of Waiting for Godot at the Odeon Theater in Paris, which famously featured a solitary, spindly plaster tree.
7. His celebrated sculpture The Dog is modeled after Pablo Picasso’s dog, an Afghan Hound named Kasbec. Giacometti considered this sculpture to be a self-portrait.
8. He also sculpted another animal, a cat, which makes a cameo appearance in one of the photographs in the exhibition (see if you can spot it!).
9. Giacometti was asked to compete for a public artwork for Chase Manhattan Plaza in New York in 1958 and embarked on two monumental sculptures, which he ultimately abandoned. In his letter to his New York gallerist he declared: “I'd rather die than send them to New York.” Today they are considered his most iconic works. The final gallery of the exhibition is a creative imagining of this unrealized city plaza.
10. The artist famously declared: “The more one works on a picture, the more impossible it becomes to finish it.”

Now that you know him, come see Giacometti’s stunning work at SAM only through October 9. Buy Tickets Now