The definitive biography of Alberto Giacometti, the greatest sculptor of the twentieth century, and a heroic figure whose vocation sustained him through a life of crippling anxiety and erotic guilt. In Mythic Giacometti, James Lord reveals the hidden "blueprint" of his classic work, Giacometti: A Biography. Almost twenty years after it first appeared, Giacometti has attained the status of a classic, one of the most candid and complete biographies of an artist in our time. Lord offers a daringly literal, visionary interpretation of the myth of Oedipus as it affected the conduct and outcome of Giacometti's life. He concentrates on the private totems of the artist's life—family legend, childhood memory, illness and injury, crucial sexual encounters, intimations of mortality—that amounted, in Lord's view, to signs of a tragic destiny directly linked to the central tragedy of Western literature. The result is a case study both in the development of an artist and in the writing of biography. Exploring Giacometti's pioneering work in surrealism, expressionism, cubism, sculpture, and drawing, Mythic Giacometti is a must-read for anyone interested in modern art, art history, and the lives of influential artists.