Francis Bacon
(1909 - 1992)
Francis Bacon was born to an English family in Dublin, Ireland, in 1909. He moved to London at the age of 16. In 1927, Bacon travelled to Berlin and Paris. He began to draw and paint while attending the free Academies. Upon his return to London, Bacon earned a living as a furniture and interior designer, while painting in a studio shared with Jean Shepeard and Roy de Maistre. Without extensive formal training, de Maistre was an important early influence on Bacon, and practical guide on matters of technique.
While Bacon exhibited his paintings within group shows during the 1930’s, it was not until after World War II that his career as a fulltime artist began. From his time during the war, working with the Air Raid Precautions division, Bacon experienced first-hand the ruins of bomb-sites. This seems to have prompted more concentrated and visceral imagery in his paintings, often seen as a reflection of the anxiety of the modern condition.
Bacon’s first post-war solo exhibition included the primary example of many works inspired by Velazquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X, 1650, and showed his use of characteristic enclosing frameworks. It was these paintings of Popes, which cemented Bacon’s reputation. Other series include portraits of contemporary figures, sphinxes, animals, and wrestlers. Later works were often in triptych, but the figures grew calmer and were set against flat expanses of color.
Since his first exhibition in 1934, the artist has been exhibited widely most recently at the Royal Academy, London in 2022. Prior to this, Bacon has been the subject of three solo shows at the Tate, London, in 1962, 1985, 2008. The first retrospective traveled to Mannheim, Turin, Zurich, and Amsterdam. In 1963 he had an exhibition at the Guggenheim in New York, which later travelled to Chicago. A 1965 show in Hamburg also toured Stockholm, and Dublin. The Grand Palais, Paris, hosted a 1971 retrospective, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1975. International exhibitions were also held in Marseilles (1976), Mexico and Caracas (1977), Madrid and Barcelona (1978), Tokyo (1983), Basel (1987), Washington D.C. (1989). More recently in Milan (2007), Edinburgh and Hamburg (2008), and Dublin (2009-10). Bacon died on 28 April, 1992.
