Bacon/Giacometti: A Dialogue - Paperback

by Michael Peppiatt (Author), Patrice Cotensin (Translator)

While working on 'Bacon-Giacometti', a major exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel in 2018, the curator, writer, and art historian Michael Peppiatt carried out extensive research on the relationship between the two artists. "At one point I felt I could almost hear the two of them talking", he revealed.

For Peppiatt, the dialogue between Francis Bacon and Alberto Giacometti has been 'turning slowly' in his mind ever since Bacon told him in detail about his encounters with the Swiss artist, while the latter was in London in 1965 to supervise the preparations for his major exhibition at the Tate. This book, written in the form of a play, is about an imagined encounter between the two men.

On the evening imagined by Peppiatt, Bacon and Giacometti enjoy a lavish dinner at Wheeler's fish restaurant, then go on to the Colony Room--Bacon's favourite club in Soho--to pursue their freely flowing conversation about life, art, and their mutual friends. After a while, the club begins to empty out, but the two artists, sensing that they may never have another occasion to talk, order more champagne...

Author Biography

Michael Peppiatt left London in 1966 for a job as arts editor at Réalités then Le Monde in Paris, where he lived at the heart of the art and literary world for the following thirty years. In 1985 he bought Art International, relaunching the magazine from his apartment in Paris. Peppiatt is the author of a dozen books, including Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma, In Giacometti's Studio, Interviews With Artists, and the acclaimed memoir, Francis Bacon in Your Blood.

Patrice Cotensin is an independent publisher based in Paris. He set up L'Echoppe some thirty years ago and has since published around 300 titles devoted mostly to 19th- and 20th-century artists, with an emphasis on their own writings and correspondence as well as biographical accounts by those who knew them.