Francis Bacon, English painter, European Art, 1600 To The Present, Biographies

Related Category: European Art, 1600 To The Present, Biographies

Francis Bacon 1910–92, English painter, b. Dublin. A self-taught artist, Bacon became the center of a storm of controversy with his Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944; Tate Gall., London), which portrayed carcasslike figures on crosses. He painted a series of variations on figural themes, e.g., Van Gogh Goes to Work, VelAzquez's Innocent X. Often large in scale, Bacon's works focus on shockingly grotesque and brutally satiric themes. From the 1950s on his images become increasingly distorted and abstract, sometimes merging human and animal forms.

See biographies by J. Russell (1979) and A. Sinclair (1993); D. Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon (1975); Hirshhorn Mus., Washington, D.C., exhibition catalog (1989).