Augusto Giacometti

Augusto Giacometti (1877–1947) was a Swiss painter from the Bregaglia valley in Graubünden and one of the earliest artists of the twentieth century to move into genuinely non-representational work.

He trained as an art teacher in Zurich and then studied in Paris under the Art Nouveau master Eugène Grasset. His colour pastels of 1898 and 1899 predate the abstractions of Kandinsky and Malevich. He approached colour almost scientifically, reducing nature to pure hue in order to study how combinations behave. He took part in the eighth Dada soirée in Zurich in 1917.

Die schöne Schweiz of 1930 is a colour stone lithograph with a butterfly motif, printed by Graphische Anstalt J. E. Wolfensberger in Zurich; the original is held in the poster collection of the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich. He was a cousin of Giovanni Giacometti and therefore a first cousin once removed of the sculptor Alberto. His epitaph reads: here lies the master of colour.