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 1898, he achieved his first major success at the Kunsthaus Zürich in a joint exhibition with his friend, Amiet, and Ferdinand Hodler.

Giacometti was deeply saddened but, in 1900, met and married Annetta Stampa (1871–1964), the daughter of a country school teacher.

[1] He participated in a showing by the Berlin Secession in 1911 and had his first solo exhibition at the Kunsthaus Zürich the following year.

Over the course of his career, he moved from Divisionism to Post-Impressionism, then on to Expressionism; with some works in the Symbolist and Art Nouveau styles along the way.