Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon (28 October 1909 – 28 April 1992) was a British painter born in Dublin, Ireland, whose powerful, predominantly figural images express isolation, brutality, and terror. Self-taught as an artist, he is considered one of Britain’s major painters of the post-World War II generation, as well as an important influence on a new generation of figurative artists in the 1980s.

Before turning to painting, he worked as an interior decorator. The convinced autodidact dealt intensively with the history of art; works of Expressionism, Surrealism, Romanticism, the late Goya, Michelangelo and Rembrandt are all reflected in his work. Photographs, such as Muybridge’s movement studies, images of athletes, friends, lovers or himself, are also incorporated into his human studies.

His breakthrough came in 1945 when Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944) won him almost instant notoriety. His mature style emerged completely with the series known as The Screaming Popes (1949–mid-1950s), in which he converted Diego Velázquez’s famous Portrait of Pope Innocent X into a nightmarish icon of hysterical terror. Many of his paintings depict isolated figures, often framed by geometric constructions, and rendered in smeared, violent colours. He was admired for his skill in using oils, whose fluidity and mysteries he exploits to express images of anger, horror, and degradation. His later portraits and figure paintings are executed in lighter colours and treat the human face and body in a style of extreme distortion and contortion.

Bacon stated, ‘I am a very optimistic person,’ and ‘I would like to celebrate life, and I always think I do.’ His work is owned by major museums around the world, and he has been the subject of several retrospective exhibitions. His studio was acquired by the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin, where it has been recreated as a room for visitors to view. In 2013, Bacon’s Three Studies of Lucian Freud broke the record for the most expensive work ever sold at auction when it was purchased for a final price of $142.4 million at Christie’s in New York.