Giovanni Giacometti

Giovanni Ulrico Giacometti (7 March 1868 – 25 June 1933) was a Swiss painter. He was the father of artists Alberto and Diego Giacometti and architect Bruno Giacometti.

He was the fourth in a family of eight children. His father, Alberto, was a baker who also ran a café. The painter Augusto Giacometti was his cousin. He received his primary education in Chur. It was there he developed an interest in art from observing the sculptures at the Bianchi marble works.

From 1886 to 1887, he studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Munich. He had wanted to attend the Academy of Fine Arts, but was insufficiently prepared. He also took lessons at two private schools and copied Old Masters at the Alte Pinakothek. Ultimately, he decided that Munich was not right for him, so he and his friend, Cuno Amiet, went to Paris, where they studied with William Adolphe Bouguereau and Joseph Nicolas Robert-Fleury at the Académie Julian until 1891, when financial difficulties forced him to return home.

In a short time, he began to feel isolated there and, in the summer of 1893, went to Rome, but found little inspiration.