Francis Bacon sends his new triptych to his friend Leiris.
« Here is the ectochrome of a new triptych . The color is a little difficult to see.
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« Here is the ectochrome of a new triptych . The color is a little difficult to see.
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Francis Bacon (1909.1992)
Autographed letter signed to Michel Leiris.
Two quarto pages (272 x 205 mm), in French, in blue felt-tip pen.
London. February 12, [19]82
"Here is the ectochrome of a new triptych". »
Rare and beautiful letter from the British painter sending a view of one of his triptychs to his friend Leiris.
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" 7 Reece Mews, London, SW7. 12/2/82; Dear Michel , Here is the ectochrome of a new triptych . The color is a little difficult to see because it is a very bright orange. I hope, Michel, that all is well with you and Zette – I received a letter from Edward Burns saying that he had a wonderful holiday with you both. See you soon, I hope, but love to you both, Francis."
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The painter and the writer met in 1975 at the opening of the "Alberto Giacometti" retrospective at the Tate Gallery in London. Their relationship deepened during Bacon's numerous stays in Paris in the mid-1970s.
On two occasions, in 1976 and 1978, Francis Bacon painted portraits of Michel Leiris. The painter created his first portrait ( Portrait of Michel Leiris , AM 1984-487) at the very moment he finished reading Leiris's autobiography. The pathetic face he painted, consumed by despair, echoes the text in which Leiris describes his existence as a shadow play, with his skull as the stage. The second portrait (not listed in the catalogue raisonné) is both more realistic and more complex. Francis Bacon saw in Leiris's writings the literary mirror of his own pictorial endeavor. Leiris, like Bacon, constantly refuted any notion of permanence or fixity in beings and things.
Focusing on the work of Francis Bacon, Michel Leiris, for his part, emphasizes its dialectic between mastery and surrender to the accidental, its splendid submission to what he calls "subjugated chance." (Didier Ottinger – Centre Pompidou)
Bacon is referring here to the triptych Studies of the human body, 1979 or more likely to the work entitled Triptych 1983.