Michael Peppiatt is an art critic, author and art historian.

Peppiatt graduated from Cambridge University in 1964, and joined The Observer

The Observer

The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...

 as art critic. He then went to Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 to take up an editorial job at Réalités

Réalités

Réalités is a weekly French-language Tunisian magazine. An independent magazine, it is published by Maghreb Media each Thursday. It was founded in 1979 by Taïeb Zahar and quickly became an important element of Tunisian national media. In 2005, an Arabic version began to be published...

 magazine, where he remained until 1969, when he was appointed arts editor at Le Monde

Le Monde

Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...

. In the mid-1970s he began reporting on cultural events across Europe for The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

 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, 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

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...

 (1909–1992), whose close friend and commentator he had been for thirty years. Chosen as a ‘Book of the Year’ by The New York Times and translated into several languages, the biography is still considered the definitive account of Bacon’s life and work. A revised, enlarged edition of this book is due out in September 2008.

Peppiatt has curated numerous exhibitions worldwide, notably travelling retrospectives of the School of London, Francis Bacon (artist), Alberto Giacometti

Alberto Giacometti

Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and printmaker.Alberto Giacometti was born in the canton Graubünden's southerly alpine valley Val Bregaglia and came from an artistic background; his father, Giovanni, was a well-known post-Impressionist painter...

, Christian Schad

Christian Schad

Christian Schad was a German painter associated with Dada and the New Objectivity movement. Considered as a group, Schad's portraits form an extraordinary record of life in Vienna and Berlin in the years following World War I.- Life :Schad was born in Miesbach, Upper Bavaria, to a prosperous...

 and Antoni Tàpies

Antoni Tàpies

Antoni Tàpies i Puig, 1st Marquess of Tàpies is a Catalan painter. He is one of the most famous European artists of his generation. After studying law for 3 years, he devoted himself from 1943 onwards only to his painting...

. In 2009 Peppiatt curated an exhibition of sculpture by Dado

Dado (painter)

Dado , was a Yugoslavian-born artist who spent most of his life and creative career in France. He is particularly known as a painter but was also active as an engraver, drawer, book illustrator and sculptor....

 for the Venice Biennale, a Maillol retrospective for Barcelona, and a Caravaggio-Bacon exhibit for the Galleria Borghese in Rome. Most recently he has organized a show of rarely seen sculptures, paintings and drawings by Giacometti in New York and brought out a monograph, “In Giacometti’s Studio” (Yale University Press), to accompany the show, which travelled to the Museum of Modern Art in Gallarate, Italy, in early 2011. Peppiatt is currently working on an anthology of interviews and studio visits with some of the many artists he has known over the years, from Jean Dubuffet

Jean Dubuffet

Jean Philippe Arthur Dubuffet was a French painter and sculptor. His idealistic approach to aesthetics embraced so called "low art" and eschewed traditional standards of beauty in favor of what he believed to be a more authentic and humanistic approach to image-making.-Life and work:Dubuffet was...

 and Balthus

Balthus

Balthasar Klossowski de Rola , best known as Balthus, was an esteemed but controversial Polish-French modern artist....

 to Sean Scully

Sean Scully

Sean Scully is an Irish-born American painter and printmaker who has twice been named a Turner Prize nominee. His work is collected in major museums worldwide.-Life and work:...

 and Tony Bevan – to be published by Yale in Autumn 2011.

In 2005, Peppiatt was awarded a Ph.D by the University of Cambridge for his publications on 20th century art

20th century art

20th-century art and what it became known as — modern art — really began with modernism in the late 19th century. Nineteenth-century movements of Post Impressionism and Art Nouveau led to the first twentieth-century art movements of Fauvism in France and Die Brücke in Germany. Fauvism in Paris...

. He is a member of the Society of Authors

Society of Authors

The Society of Authors is a trade union for professional writers that was founded in 1884 to protect the rights of writers and fight to retain those rights .It has counted amongst its members and presidents numerous notable writers and poets including Tennyson The Society of Authors (UK) is a...

 and the Royal Society of Literature

Royal Society of Literature

The Royal Society of Literature is the "senior literary organisation in Britain". It was founded in 1820 by George IV, in order to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". The Society's first president was Thomas Burgess, who later became the Bishop of Salisbury...

.