Michael Henry Peppiatt[1] (born 9 October 1941) is an English art historian, curator and writer.
Biography
Son of Edward George Peppiatt (died 1983), B.Sc, ARCS, of Silver Birches, Stocking Pelham, near Buntingford, Hertfordshire, technical and production director for a pharmaceutical manufacturing company,[2] and Elsa Eugénie (née Schlaich; died 1997).[3]
Education and career
Michael Peppiatt studied at Brentwood School, Essex, at the University of Göttingen, and at Trinity Hall, Cambridge (BA 1964, MA 1985, PhD)[4][5] and subsequently joined The Observer as a junior art critic. He then went to Paris to take up an editorial job at Réalités magazine, where he remained until 1969, when he was appointed arts editor at Le Monde.[6] In the mid-1970s he began reporting on cultural events across Europe for The New York Times and The Financial Times, becoming Paris correspondent for several art magazines, notably Art News and Art International. In 1985, Peppiatt became owner and editor of Art International,[7] which he relaunched from Paris, devoting special issues to the artists he most admired.
In 1994, Peppiatt returned to London with his wife, the art historian Jill Lloyd, and their two children, where he wrote the biography of Francis Bacon (1909–1992), whose close friend and commentator he had been for thirty years. Chosen as a "Book of the Year"[8] by The New York Times and translated into several languages, the biography is considered the definitive account of Bacon's life and work.
Peppiatt curated a Miró exhibition that travelled from the Bucerius Kunst Forum in Hamburg to the Kunstsammlung, Düsseldorf, in 2014–15.[13] Peppiatt's latest memoir, Francis Bacon in Your Blood, was published by Bloomsbury in August 2015.[14] In 2018, Peppiatt curated the exhibition Bacon/Giacometti at the Beyeler Foundation, Switzerland. In 2022, Peppiatt curated the exhibition, Francis Bacon: Man and Beast, at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. The exhibition charts the development of Bacon's work through the lens of his fascination with animals and its impact on his treatment of the human figure.[15]
Peppiatt has completed a new memoir about his life in Paris from the 1960s onwards, to be published by Bloomsbury.
Peppiatt serves on the advisory council of the UK Friends of the National Museum of Women in the Arts.[16] He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries[17] and the Royal Historical Society.[18]
Bibliography
1964: Modern Art in Britain
1976: Francis Bacon: l’art de l’impossible (trans. with Michel Leiris)
1983: Imagination’s Chamber: Artists and their Studios (with Alice Bellony Rewald)[19]
