Which surrealist artist created the sculpture 'The Palace at 4 a.m.'?

The surrealist artist who created The Palace at 4 a.m. was Alberto Giacometti.

Giacometti made the sculpture in 1932 during his Surrealist period. The fragile, open framework resembles an architectural model or a skeletal stage set, with thin wooden elements enclosing several mysterious forms. It is not a conventional palace but an imaginative structure suspended between a building, a cage, and a memory.

Giacometti connected the work to an intense six-month relationship with a woman. He described the imagined palace as a fantastical construction made of matches, so delicate that the slightest false movement could cause part of it to collapse. That personal explanation helps account for the sculpture’s combination of intimacy, instability, and dream logic.

The work is often confused with the paintings of artists such as Yves Tanguy or Max Ernst because all were associated with Surrealism. Giacometti, however, was a sculptor whose early Surrealist objects preceded his later fame for attenuated human figures. The Palace at 4 a.m. is now in the Museum of Modern Art’s collection in New York.