Today we mark Peter’s 88th birthday.
He lived with one foot in the wild and the other in the record of it, knowing that to love the world one must first look at it without illusion. He did not seek comfort in beauty. He stayed with it long enough to see what it demanded. Shaped by time, pressure, loss, and the weight of responsibility.
Through photographs, diaries, and marks made by hand, he chronicled a planet in motion and under strain. Elephants and rivers. Bones, blood, handwriting, dust. The living world as it was, and as it was already slipping away. What he left behind is not nostalgia for what has vanished, but a clear and unflinching account of what remains, and of what it costs to lose it.
Peter believed that attention was a form of devotion, and that to bear witness was to accept obligation. His work asks us to look longer than is comfortable, to resist indifference, and to understand that the wild is not separate from us, but bound to us. What disappears from the world takes something of us with it.
On his birthday, we honor a life spent watching carefully and recording honestly. A body of work that continues to speak, even now, with urgency, clarity, and conscience.
The Peter Beard Museum has opened in Siwa, Egypt, with its inaugural permanent exhibition, Eye of the Desert. The first institution dedicated to Peter’s archival legacy, the museum presents a survey examining his study of ecology and memory, underscored by an expedition to Northern Egypt in 2001.
Developed in collaboration with Dr. Mounir Neamatalla and Environmental Quality International, the building was built from kershef, the traditional Siwan mixture of clay, salt, and palm wood.
The site presents a selection of Peter’s archive as an evolving field of inquiry, celebrating the continuity between his diaries, photographs, and mixed media practice. Returning these materials to the region that informed them, Eye of the Desert affirms his legacy as both artist and witness at the intersection of natural and cultural history.
The exhibition, ‘Wild Life: Francis Bacon and Peter Beard’ is open at the Ordovas Gallery, 25 Savile Row, London.
Appointments are encouraged, but not required. To make an appointment, please email: [email protected] or call +44 (0)20 7287 5013.
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Francis Bacon and Peter Beard had a decades-long friendship, bolstered by their lively correspondence. This letter was written by Francis to Peter when they were both in Africa in August of 1969. Peter in Kenya, and Francis from what was then Rhodesia, present day Zimbabwe. Peter had pasted the letter inside this catalogue from the Marlborough Gallery.
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#collage #Africa #Johannesburg
For anyone interested in the catalogue for the exhibition, ‘Wild Life: Francis Bacon and Peter Beard’ it is available for purchase at Ordovas Books. It includes essays by Martin Harrison and Sophie Pretorius; the catalogue is the most extensive publication to date to focus on the artistic and personal relationship between Francis Bacon and Peter Beard, featuring unseen materials from Beard’s archives including letters and photographs gifted to Bacon.
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#artistscatalogue #ordovaspublications #peterbeard #peterbeardart #francisbacon #francisbaconartist #beardbacon #wildlife #ordovasgallery #londongallery #modernart #modernism #americanartist #britishartist #photography #painting #collage #archivalmaterial #correspondence #diaries @ordovasgallery@peterbeardart
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1. 'Wild Life Francis Bacon and Peter Beard' catalogue
2. Working document from Francis Bacon's studio: self-portrait photographed by Peter Beard, 1975
PB and Francis Bacon had a decades-long friendship, bolstered by their lively correspondence. If you would like to see more, including the contents of the letter, please visit the ‘The Diary’ on the Ordovas website that features the online exhibition, Wild Life which explores their friendship, shared concerns about conservation, and their influence on each other.
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#peterbeard #peterbeardart #francisbacon #beardbacon #wildlife #thediary #letters #correspondence #friendship #envelope #letter #stamps #currentexhibition #ordovasgallery #ordovas #ordovasonline #londongallery #modernart #modernism #americanartist #britishartist #photography #painting #collage @ordovasgallery
‘Wild Life: Francis Bacon and Peter Beard’ at Ordovas in London opens today online. The exhibition explores the friendship between Francis Bacon (1909–1992) and Peter Beard who, despite working on different sides of the world, shared deeply similar personal and creative passions. They first met in 1967 and quickly became friends and admirers of each other’s work, serving as one another’s subjects on many occasions over the years.
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Organized in collaboration with The Estate of Peter Beard, the exhibition is intended as a celebration of Beard’s life. Works from the period of the two artists’ friendship will be shown side by side for the first time, along with unseen materials from Beard’s archives including letters, photographs and Beard’s diaries, which served as the genesis for his art.
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'Wild Life: Francis Bacon and Peter Beard' will open to the public as soon as it is permissible in accordance with UK government guidelines.
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Francis Bacon and Peter Beard photographed during ‘The Dead Elephant Interviews’, 1970s.
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