1901-1966 - Alberto Giacometti, the Surrealist sculptor known for his nervous, elongated forms, was born in Stampa, Switzerland. Giacometti started drawing at the age of nine, painting at twelve and created his first sculpture at fourteen. His father was a well-known Impressionist painter and Giacometti's first teacher. In 1919, Giacometti began studying sculpture in Geneva and then, for three years, with Bourdelle in Paris. When he began to work on his own, Giacometti found that he had difficulty working from the figure which seemed to disintegrate as he worked. He tried working instead from his imagination and continued to do so for ten years. At this time Cubism, African art and the sculptor, Jacques Lipchitz, influenced his work. His style gradually changed to become first thin and tablet-like and then solid and compact, in structures like "The Couple", and "Spoon Woman". These last were bizarre, amusing monoliths, monumentally concave, combining a powerful physical confrontation with erotic content.