Francis Bacon Exhibition Catalogue

Francis Bacon (1909-92) is widely regarded internationally as Britain's greatest painter. Drawing on low-art sources, including photographs torn from magazines and imagery from films, with a keen awareness of the rich historical tradition of painting stretching back to the renaissance, he developed a way of portraying the human body that was unique in the history of painting. Beginning his public career in 1944 with Three Studies for Figures at the Base of the Crucifixion he depicted human beings, usually in isolation, at moments of extreme tension or even pain, distorted like figures from a fantastical nightmare.

For many contemporary critics, Bacon's bleakly existential outlook, coupled with his flamboyant homosexuality and colourful private life, made him a controversial figure. Nevertheless the mastery of the medium of paint by this self-taught artist was recognised relatively early, and in 1962 he had a retrospective exhibition at Tate. In 1985, on the occasion of another exhibition, the then Tate Director remarked that Bacon was surely the 'greatest living painter; no artist in our century has presented the human predicament with such insight and feeling'.

Towards the end of the first decade of a new century this lavishly illustrated survey provides a fresh perspective on the achievement of this unique artist, whose work was so individual that his influence lies more in the intensity of his commitment to art itself than in any direct stylistic legacy. Leading authority on the international avant-garde Matthew Gale and renowned expert on British art Chris Stephens are joined by other international critics in a radical reassessment of Bacon's importance for the twenty-first century.

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Artists Biography

(b Dublin, 28 Oct 1909; d Madrid, 28 April 1992). English painter. One of the most individual, powerful and disturbing artists of the period following World War II, he took the human figure as his subject at a time when art was dominated by abstract styles, and he was also one of the first to depict overtly homosexual themes. Though largely self-taught, he was widely read and of great independence of mind. His subject-matter and procedures of painting are too personal to be imitated with any real success by other artists, but in Britain and further afield he remains a towering example to those dedicated to the depiction of the human figure.

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