Portrait of Michel Leiris is an intense portrait painted by Francis Bacon in 1976. The sitter is the writer and anthropologist Michel Leiris, a central figure of the French cultural avant-garde and a close friend of the artist. Bacon focuses all attention on the face: emerging from a black background, it appears distorted by inner tensions, with features that seem simultaneously to melt and to stiffen. The paint vibrates between colour and flesh, between presence and dissolution, while the physiognomy seems to be passing through a state of mental metamorphosis.
This is not a portrait that seeks likeness, but an intense revelation of interiority: Bacon captures the restlessness, vulnerability and vertigo of thought. The result is a face that thinks and suffers, suspended between lucidity and disturbance.
Unique quality material
Print on handmade Amalfi paper Sheet size: 29 x 42 cm (11.4 x 16.5 in) With frame: 31 x 44 cm (12.2 x 17.3 in) Material: artwork printed on very fine handmade Amalfi paper with deckled edges Frame: light brown beech wood and wood pulp, handmade
How an Amalfi art print is made, what the frame is like, what museum glass is, how long shipping takes, and how returns work: we’ve gathered all the answers on a single page.
