Details — Click to read
After meeting in 1965, the French writer and ethnographer became one of Bacon’s closest friends and admirers; his opinion was among the few that the painter actually accepted. Regardless of the disproportion and enlargement of his facial features, Leiris is still recognizable. In this case, the distortionof the physical features is not driven by aesthetics, but is used to reach deeper into the soul of the sitter and highlight the subject’s personality. The fact that only the left eye is left undisturbed and majorly enlarged could suggest that the central theme of the painting is vision.
