Don Bachardy: A Life in Portraits

A career survey of the Los Angeles portrait artist known for his spontaneous, blunt portrayals

Published with The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.

Over the past seven decades, Santa Monica-based artist Don Bachardy (born 1934) has created thousands of visceral, compelling portraits from life. Many of these poignant renderings are of Bachardy's longtime partner, the writer Christopher Isherwood. Other subjects include such famous figures as Bette Davis, W.H. Auden, James Baldwin and David Hockney. This lavishly illustrated volume accompanies the Huntington's landmark exhibition, which explores the range and depth of Bachardy's practice. Essays by art critics, biographers and some of Bachardy's subjects offer fresh perspectives on the work of this inventive artist, setting him in context within a vibrant community of Los Angeles artists, actors, writers and intellectuals. The career survey is filled with evocative portraits and photos from Bachardy's personal collection, loans from private collections and objects from the Huntington's extensive collection of Bachardy's work and Isherwood's papers.