Francis Bacon

born Dublin (IRELAND) 1909 died Madrid (SPAIN) 1992

English painter of Irish birth. Francis Bacon came to London in 1925 and although he received no formal art training, he created a sensation in 1945 when he exhibited his Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (London, Tate Gallery) at the Lefevre Gallery in London. His work was Expressionist in style, and his distorted human forms were unsettling.

He developed his personal style and gloomy subject matter during the 1950s, when he achieved an international reputation. Apart from periods spent in Monte Carlo, Tangier and Paris, he spent the rest of his life in London. His high spirits, ready wit and exceptional generosity attracted people from a wide variety of backgrounds including artists, writers and Soho eccentrics. Many of these individuals feature repeatedly in his portraits. During his lifetime, Bacon had major exhibitions in cities such as London, Paris, New York, Washington, Dublin, Los Angeles and Moscow. The artist died in Madrid on 28 April 1992.

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• Figures in a Garden circa 1936
• Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion circa 1944
• Figure in a Landscape 1945
• Figure with Monkey 1951
• Study of a Dog 1952
• Figure in a Landscape circa 1952
• Monkey 1955
• Study for a Portrait of Van Gogh IV 1957
• Two Owls, No. 1 circa 1957-61
• Figure in a Framework circa 1957-61
• Study for a Bullfight 1969
• Triptych - August 1972 1972
• Figure in Movement 1985
• Second Version of Triptych 1944 1988

Quotes

"Flesh and meat are life! If I paint red meat as I paint bodies it is just because I find it very beautiful. I don't think anyone has ever really understood that. Ham, pigs, tongues, sides of beef seen in the butcher's window, all that death, I find it very beautiful. And it's all for sale-how unbelievably surrealistic! I often imagine that the accident that made man into the animal he has become also happened to other animals-lions or hyenas for example-while man remained a primate...I imagine men hanging in butcher's shops for hyenas, who would be dressed in fur coats. The men would be hung by their feet, or cut up for stew or kebabs."

Francis Bacon, Exclusive interview with Francis Giacobetti, 1991-2, The Art Newspaper, June 2003.

"Bacon was a visionary, but in addition it had an extraordinary gift: the common sense. We were great friends. Both we professed the religion of the fatalism. It united the same distrust to us by the human species: the man is small, like the cell of the cancer, and the cancer extends with an amazing speed."

Peter Beard on Francis Bacon.

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