Wiki art francis bacon
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Toward the end of 1928 Bacon returned to London, where he worked as a furniture and interior designer. In the foreground, a well-dressed man under an umbrella sits in a circular enclosure which might be decorated with more bones and another carcass. After his long engagement with the Pope series, Bacon presented a series inspired by Vincent Van Gogh’s painting The Painter on the Road to Tarascon (1888).
The Old Masters were an important source of inspiration for him, particularly Diego Velázquez'sPortrait of Pope Innocent X (c.1650) which Bacon used as the basis for his own famous series of "screaming popes." At a time when many lost faith in painting, Bacon maintained his belief in the importance of the medium, saying of his own working that his own pictures "deserve either the National Gallery or the dustbin, with nothing in between."
Important Art by Francis Bacon
Progression of Art
1933
Crucifixion
Crucifixion is the work that first launched Bacon into the public eye, long before the much greater successes of the post-war years.
He also grew dissatisfied with his early works, and destroyed most of the paintings from the period. His output can be broadly described as sequences or variations on a single motif; beginning with the 1930s Picasso-informed Furies, moving on to the 1940s male heads isolated in rooms or geometric structures, the 1950s screaming popes, and the mid-to-late 1950s animals and lone figures, the 1960s portraits of friends, the nihilistic 1970s self-portraits, and the cooler more technical 1980s late works.
Bacon took up painting in his late 30s, having drifted as an interior decorator, bon vivant and gambler.
At the time of writing the picture is owned by Damien Hirst, an artist who has acknowledged a large debt to Bacon.
Murderme Collection, London
1944
Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion
Three Studies launched Bacon's reputation in the mid 1940s and shows the importance of biomorphic Surrealism in forging his early style.
A number of his relationships, and especially the many close years with Lucian Freud are discussed in Sebastian Smee's book "The Art of Rivalry".
In 1953, Hanover held an exhibition of Bacon's paintings that included Two Figures, a depiction of two men embracing in bed, an image that created a huge scandal.
Uncharacteristically, the coloring is light and subdued, although the red and green highlights hint at an inner struggle. Lacy was attractive, well-bred, and highly self-destructive. After the war, he took up painting with a renewed passion, regarding Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944) as the true beginning of his work.
In 1948, Bacon enjoyed a career milestone when the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired Painting (1946). The long necks, snapping mouths and contorted bodies featured in the painting express horror and suffering, a forceful commentary on the aftermath of the war. His work was exhibited internationally throughout the later years of his life, including retrospectives at the Hirshhorn and the Tate Gallery.
The art critic Robert Hughes described him as "the most implacable, lyric artist in late 20th-century England, perhaps in all the world" and along with Willem de Kooning as "the most important painter of the disquieting human figure in the 50's of the 20th century." Francis Bacon was the subject of two Tate retrospectives and a major showing in 1971 at the Grand Palais.
From these Bacon not only pioneered new ways to suggest movement in painting, but to bring painting and photography into a more coherent union.
Bacon modeled the figures after photos of animals in motion, showing an early interest in the movement of the body that became a strong theme in his later painting. Following the 1971 suicide of his lover George Dyer, his art became more sombre, inward-looking and preoccupied with the passage of time and death. His paintings were also surveyed for inclusion in the International Surrealist Exhibition, organized by Herbert Read, but were rejected for not being surrealist enough.
In 1926, after being thrown out of the family home, the 16 year old Bacon arrived in London with little money and no clear plan. The climax of this later period is marked by masterpieces, including his 1982's "Study for Self-Portrait" and Study for a Self-Portrait—Triptych, 1985–86.
Despite his bleak existentialist outlook, solidified in the public mind through his articulate and vivid series of interviews with David Sylvester, Bacon in person was highly engaging and charismatic, articulate, well-read and openly gay.
In the left panel, a naked Dyer sits on a toilet facing away from the viewer; he rests on a massive black bed or chair in the centre panel; and he is sitting contorted on a pedestal chair in the right panel.