Alberto Giacometti, one of the greatest sculptors of the 20th century, gave physical expression to his twin obsessions of the human form and the alienation of modern life. Because of his canonical position in art history and the reams of scholarship produced about him, Giocometti remains to many the elusive master artist, distant and remote on the Olympus of creative endeavour. Ernst Scheidegger, close friend of the artist, knew a very different Giacometti. Scheidegger accompanied him to his studio, to bistros of Paris and the family home in the Swiss mountains. Traces of a Friendship is a document of this intimate life of Giacometti, consisting of photographs Scheidegger took over two decades. The pictures allow access to the most closely held aspects of the artist's life: sketching in his studio, having a cup of coffee, his works in progress, his art in installation views. Scheidegger captures the essence of the artist's working life in images artful in their own right. AUTHOR: Ernst Scheidegger, born in 1923, was a founder member of Magnum in Paris, and later a teacher at the renowned College for Design in Ulm (Germany). For more than twenty years he was picture editor of the Neue Zurcher Zeitung. At the same time he ran an art gallery and a publishing house, now Scheidegger & Spiess Publishers. He has also made film portraits of artists. 1 colour, 190 b/w illustrations
