Francis BACON

Francis Bacon (1909-1992)

Francis Bacon was a self-taught British artist. At the age of seventeen, in conflict with his father, he left the family home in London for Berlin

In 1927, he discovered Pablo Picasso's drawings exhibited in Paul Rosenberg's gallery in Paris. Fascinated by the master, he decided to become a painter and adopted a first style marked by cubism and surrealism.

In 1933, Francis Bacon painted one of his first "Crucifixion", which attracted the attention of Herbert Read, an art historian.
In 1943 Francis Bacon was discharged from the army. He destroyed much of his work prior to 1944, when he created the work that marked the true beginning of his career, a triptych entitled "Three Studies for Figures at the Foot of a Crucifixion."
In creating this work, Bacon was inspired by the "Crucifixion" that Picasso painted in 1930.
Bacon's work was not really recognised until after the Second World War: his works provoked extreme reactions, often of intense repulsion, because they were so violent and expressive. His isolated, sometimes crucified figures reveal the cruelty of the human race in an almost obsessive manner. At the centre of the pictorial space, they embody the painter's demons.
Francis Bacon finds inspiration and echoes of his research in Spanish painting, particularly Diego Velázquez and Francisco de Goya.

His first solo exhibition took place at the Hannover Gallery in 1949.
In 1962, the Tate Gallery in London organised an exhibition of Francis Bacon's work. In the 1960s, Bacon painted several iconic triptychs, including Three Figures in a Room in 1964. After the suicide of his partner George Dyer in 1971, the artist produced three triptychs in which he obsessively described the scene of the tragedy. He also painted numerous self-portraits.His favourite theme is the representation of the human body in the form of flayed, agitated and deformed figures. Largely influenced by classical art, Francis Bacon built up a violent and heart-rending body of work, triturating the human figure, which he nevertheless painted exclusively, without ever seeking the abstraction dear to his time.

"We must never forget that a painting cannot be as violent as life itself, and life is so violent..."
Francis Bacon