Six Memos on the Art of Bruno Leti
Art History Collectible Art Book Artist Biography Picture Book Contemporary Art Australian Art Art Monograph Printmaking
Bruno Leti: Six Memos on the Art of Bruno Leti is a lavishly produced Australian hardcover that belongs on every collector’s shelf devoted to contemporary printmaking and painterly abstraction. Author Sasha Grishin, one of Australia’s leading art historians, unpacks the career of Bruno Leti—an artist whose work bridges the worlds of traditional engraving, modernist colour-field painting and experimental book arts—through six thematic “memos” that read like intimate letters to the reader. The 2002 first edition is illustrated throughout with tipped-in colour plates that reproduce Leti’s luminous monotypes, woodcuts and mixed-media canvases at true-to-life scale, while the dust-jacket’s bold typographic design echoes the artist’s own graphic sensibility. A copy in very-good condition with only a neat, non-authorial inscription on the inner cover is increasingly scarce, making this title a prime find for both young adults discovering Australian modernism and seasoned collectors chasing out-of-print art monographs.
What sets this volume apart is the synergy between Grishin’s accessible scholarship and Leti’s studio philosophy. Each memo explores a core tension in Leti’s practice: order versus chaos, the physicality of pigment versus the ethereality of light, the dialogue between European printmaking tradition and the antipodean landscape. Grishin enriches these ideas with behind-the-scenes photographs of Leti pulling prints in his Melbourne atelier, plus comparative shots of Italian frescoes that inspired his monumental colour palettes. Readers come away understanding why Leti’s work is held in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the NGA, yet remains rooted in the tactile romance of ink, paper and hand-pressed plates.
For buyers, this is more than a picture book—it is a portable retrospective that doubles as reference for art students and a conversation piece for modern living rooms. The sewn-binding and heavyweight art paper ensure the book stays flat for study, while the generous page margins invite annotation. With contemporary print prices for Leti climbing at auction, owning this definitive monograph now is both an aesthetic pleasure and a hedge against market scarcity.
Refer to our eBay listing for a full condition report and many more high-quality pictures of this item.
Buy Now