Francis Bacon: The Papal Portraits of 1953

British artist Francis Bacon (1909–1992), one of the foremost artists of the twentieth century, is known for his expressive figurative paintings. Perhaps Bacon's most famous image - the so-called 'screaming pope' in Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1953) - became the touchstone for the longest series of paintings in his career, the Papal Portraits of 1953. In 1953 'haunted and obsessed by the image…by its perfection,' Bacon sought to reinvent Velázquez's seventeenth-century Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1650) in the paintings that are the focus of this book. Francis Bacon replaced the grand, official state portrait with an intimate, spontaneous 'candid camera' glimpse behind the well-ordered exterior. While the Spanish master Velázquez portayed the pope ex cathedra, Bacon captured him in camera, as if behind a closed door or through a one-way mirror. This series of eight papal portraits, painted during a period of just a few weeks in the summer of 1953, was brought together for the first time by noted Bacon scholar Hugh M. Davies for a 1999 exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, along with several other works from the same period, including Sphinx I and two recently found Study after Velázquez paintings from 1950. This book includes a new essay by Davies, discussing the artist's influences and sources of imagery for the series, and a previously unpublished interview that Davies conducted with Bacon in 1973.

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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.

Reviews

'Davies writes fluently [...] with real insight... These reproductions are, by a considerable margin, the finest available in any publication on Bacon.'

Irish Arts Review

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