“Le grand jeu de Francis Bacon”

Paris, Galerie Claude Bernard, (December 17) 1976.
1 vol. (215 x 290 mm) of [6] f., 16 p. and [3] f. Paperback, with illustrated flap cover. 

First edition. 20 full-page reproductions + a triptych on the cover.
Extensive preface by Michel Leiris: “Le grand jeu de Francis Bacon”

Presentation copy, signed: “To Bernard with my best regards. Francis Bacon, Paris, 20/1/77”.

We apologize for the imperfect translation generated by Deepl for the purposes of the show.

This catalog was published on the occasion of the exhibition organized in Paris by Claude Bernard, in collaboration with the Marlborough galleries in London, New York, Rome and Zurich. Its major preface is the work of Michel Leiris, a very close friend of the artist and his “most penetrating critic”: “I often saw,” wrote Philippe Sollers, “in the past, at the back of the bar at the Pont-Royal, in Paris, Leiris and Bacon together, leaning towards each other in a knowing conversation. I loved watching them, Leiris serious, Bacon applying himself to being serious.”

Ten years earlier, Leiris had written: “What Francis Bacon’s paintings have said to me” in the preface to the catalog of the Maeght exhibition (1966); he would go on to write the preface to the retrospective devoted to the painter in 1971 at the Grand Palais, then this one, at the Galerie Claude Bernard (1976). These three events constitute the only solo exhibitions of Francis Bacon that took place in Paris between 1960 and 1980.