During the late 1940's, Giacometti succeeded in producing what had seemed for himself unattainable: the motion of the human body in sculpture. Previously, he had been working on a series of elongated stationary women, but now the artist became fascinated with forward movement. The first sculpture with physical movement was Walking Man.

'Walking is wonderful, simply wonderful', as he had said to Isabel one afternoon nine years earlier. Walking is wonderful may seem quite an obvious thought. But we have seen what a synthesis of mind and body it enabled Giacometti to achieve and what a basic experience it therefore conveyed, by way of the statue, to other beings, restoring thus a social function to the artist. Moreover it readily took different forms in other observations, which became works of art in the ensuing months. Staggering Man (or Homme qui tombe) for instance, was finished and cast in bronze only in 1950, but it appears in a studio drawing as early as 1947 and what is closer to steady balance than its opposite, a fall, witness Alberto's accident which was always on his mind.
(Y. Bonnefoy, op. cit., p. 326)

The fateful accident occured one night in 1938 when Alberto was knocked down by a car at the Place des Pyramides. He felt it was preordained and attached great importance to this event. As a result of the accident, his limp, helped to reinforce this belief.