(b Borgonovo, nr Stampa, 15 Nov 1902; d Paris, 15 July 1985). Furniture designer and sculptor, son of (1) Giovanni Giacometti. He had an unfocused youth, not completing secondary school (1917–19) in Schiers, near Chur, and wandering from job to job. In 1925 he joined his brother Alberto Giacometti in Paris, where he readily helped with the technical aspects of his work, carving stone and making plaster and bronze casts. After assisting with his brother’s commissions for the interior decorator Jean-Michel Frank in the 1930s, Giacometti began to create his own body of work. He studied sculpture briefly at the Académie Ranson in 1942 and then did commercial decorative work. By 1949 he received commissions for bases and stands, which led in the mid-1950s to his first designs for chairs and tables in the openwork geometric style associated with his name. The linear supports of his furniture were invariably adorned with animal motifs, usually small and whimsical. A few of these became independent sculptures, notably Head-waiter Cat (1961–7; priv. col.) and Ostrich (1977; priv. col., see Marchesseau, pp. 121–3). At first, each of his designs was unique, with the structural or decorative elements varied, but some were later made in multiples. He received sizeable commissions, including chairs, lamps and a café bar for the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence (1962–4); light fixtures for the Kronenhalle restaurant in Zurich (1964); and doors, a wall relief and lectern for the St Roseline Chapel at La Celle Roubard in the Var region (1968). His last and most important commission was from the Musée Picasso in Paris (1984–5), for which he made furniture and light fixtures in bronze and white polymer resin.

Part of the Giacometti family