In the month of May, 1932, the first one-man show of sculptures by Alberto Giacometti took place at the Galérie Pierre Colle in Paris. It was not, however, the introduction of an unknown artist. Giacometti was a member of the Surrealist group, a favorite of André Breton, and his work had appeared in more than a dozen exhibitions along with other artists during the previous few years. So the Pierre Colle exhibition came as public consecration of a talent already recognized and praised. On the opening day, one of the first to arrive was Pablo Picasso, alert as ever to the latest artistic innovations and eager to turn them to advantage in his own work when possible. Giacometti and Picasso were acquainted but not yet friends. The Spanish painter was twenty years older than the Swiss sculptor, and already internationally known, though not yet by any means world famous. Neither man was given to impulsive commitments of friendship or effusions of personal feeling. Both were aware that the other was not someone to be taken lightly, hence it was natural that their approach to one another should be circumspect.

The Giacometti exhibition was not a commercial triumph, but it was a considerable succès d’estime. The most influential journal devoted to contemporary art at that time was Cahiers d’Art, edited in Paris by Christian Zervos, a great promoter of Picasso’s renown and assiduous compiler of his colossal catalogue raisonné. Writing of Giacometti’s recent work, Zervos had this,