Sold for: $25,000

PROVENANCE
Albert White Gallery, Toronto
Private Collection, West Vancouver

LITERATURE
Bruno Sabatier, Francis Bacon: Oeuvre Graphique – The Graphic Work: Catalogue Raisonné, JSC Modern Art Gallery, Paris, 2012

Francis Bacon is one of the most important and celebrated painters of the last century, known for his raw, emotionally charged depictions of the human body from a bleak, existentialist perspective.

This portrait is of Michel Leiris, a French anthropologist, writer and poet. For much of the twentieth century, Leiris was at the forefront of French intellectual life - he was intimately connected with the Surrealist movement and was a friend of Pablo Picasso’s. From the 1970s, Bacon spent considerable time in Paris, and in 1974, he bought an apartment there, which enabled him to deepen his friendship with Leiris, so much so that Leiris would later produce a richly illustrated monograph on Bacon’s oeuvre.

Eddy Batache, also a friend of Bacon’s, was a French art historian and expert on Surrealism. He helped Bacon with the French translation of his letters to Leiris. In return, Bacon allowed Batache to use prints based on his paintings to illustrate his publications, such as Requiem pour la fin des temps in 1978.

This portrait of Leiris, subtle and insightful, is an extraordinary work. The eye of Leiris, intelligent and compelling, communicates the importance of his intellectual influence on Bacon.

This work is based on Francis Bacon's oil painting from 1976, Portrait of Michel Leiris. It was made for Eddie Batache's publication Requiem pour la Fin des Temps, which was published by Éditions d'art Georges Visat in 1978

All prices are in Canadian Dollars

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