It is a story I have been wanting to write for a long time, telling it as it really was before that whole world that I shared with Francis vanishes...Michael Peppiatt met Francis Bacon in June 1963 in Soho's French House to request an interview for a student magazine that he was editing. Bacon invited him to lunch, and over oysters and Chablis they began a friendship and a no-holds-barred conversation that would continue until Bacon's death thirty years later.Fasci...

Published in 1996, Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma was the first in-depth study of the artist's life. It has not been superseded.In this substantially revised, updated edition - to coincide with the artist's centenary, which will be celebrated from autumn 2008 through summer 2009 - Peppiatt will incorporate confidential material Bacon gave him, which he did not include in the first edition.This valuable, first-hand information comes from the hundreds of convers...

Francis Bacon was one of most elusive and enigmatic creative geniuses of the twentieth century. However much his avowed aim was to simplify both himself and his art, he remained a deeply complex person. Bacon was keenly aware of this underlying contradiction, and whether talking or painting, strove consciously towards absolute clarity and simplicity, calling himself simply complicated.Until now, this complexity has rarely come across in the large number of studies on Bacons life an...

The Existential Englishman is both a memoir and an intimate portrait of Paris – a city that can enchant, exhilarate and exasperate in equal measure. As Peppiatt remarks: 'You reflect and become the city just as the city reflects and becomes you'. This, then, is one man's not uncritical love letter to Paris.Intensely personal, candid and entertaining, The Existential Englishman chronicles Peppiatt's relationship with Paris in a series of vignettes structured around...

Élevé dans une Irlande rurale dont il aura tôt fait de rejeter le poids des conventions, Francis Bacon trouve dans le Londres puis le Paris des années 1920 les sources d’une inspiration plus conforme à sa démesure. Ses premières œuvres, animées d’une violence aussi vitale que destructrice, dérangent. L’intransigeance de sa vision ainsi que sa virtuosité picturale l’imposent cependant sur la scène artistique d’après-guerre. Consacré comme un des peintres les plus originaux du XXe siècle, Fr...

Praised by the Art Newspaper as the best art writer of his generation, Michael Peppiatt has encountered many European modern artists over more than fifty years. This selection of some of his best biographical writing covers a wide spectrum of modern art, from Van Gogh and Pierre Bonnard, to personal conversations with painter Sonia Delaunay, artist Dora Maar, who was Picassos lover in the 1930s and 1940s, and Francis Bacon, perhaps the most famous of the many artists with whom Pep...

THE TIMES AND WATERSTONES BEST ART BOOK OF 2023'Intimate and insightful . . . reads like a novel by Samuel Beckett' Paul TherouxA portrait of one of the twentieth century's greatest sculptors from one of our most eminent art historiansToday the work of Alberto Giacometti is world-famous and his sculptures sell for record-breaking prices. But from his early days as an unknown outsider to the end of a ...

This book, a biography on Francis Bacon, is inspired by the friendship the author had with Bacon and based on records of the conversations that took place since 1963. The book forms the first comprehensive account of the artist's life and his work.

The documents selected for Francis Bacon: A Self-Portrait in Words illustrate Bacons sharp wit and ability to express complex ideas in highly personal, memorable language. Included here are not only letters to friends, patrons and fellow artists, but also intriguing notes and lists of paintings. They often come with a sketch as an aide-mémoire or an injunction to himself as he worked in the studio, and many have only come to light since his death.Bacons letters mirror and ...