Francis Bacon Biography and Paintings

Francis Bacon (1909 - 1992)

Francis Bacon was born in Dublin (1909). Bacon's Surrealist-influenced paintings of the early 1930s already presaged a theme that would dominate his later oeuvre: that of the crucifixion. Inspired by a Picasso exhibition he saw in Paris in 1926, Bacon began to paint in 1929. Self-taught as an artist, he made his living in London by designing interiors. In 1942 he destroyed a large part of his previous work. It was not until after the war that Bacon's personal, inimitable style emerged, in large-format depictions of suffering, self-despairing human beings, often crassly shocking visions of anxiety and hopelessness.

The imagery of the crucifixion weighs heavily in the work of Francis Bacon. John Russell wrote that the crucifixion in Bacon's work is a "generic name for an environment in which bodily harm is done to one or more persons and one or more other persons gather to watch". Bacon admitted that he saw the scene as "a magnificent armature on which you can hang all types of feeling and sensation". He believed the imagery of the crucifixion allowed him to examine "certain areas of human behaviour" in a unique way, as the armature of the theme had been accumulated by so many old masters.

Painting 1946 Second Version

Painting of 1946, now in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, marked the beginning of this new stylistic phase. Francis Bacon began to blur the contours of figures and faces, drawing swaths of paint across their features and distorting them. The individual represented became secondary, interchangeable, as the general theme of damaged life, a damaged reality, came to the fore. Despite his insistence that he pursued purely aesthetic aims, Bacon's paintings eloquently testify to the fact that his subject was indeed man in jeopardy.

The canvas in the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, done in 1971, is a second version of the 1946 Painting, which established the artist's international reputation. In the earlier image, the figure appeared as a speaker in a black robe, haranguing his audience. In the later version, this association with tyranny, typical of the postwar period, was shifted into an everyday, contemporary setting. Yet the pervading sense of brutality remained.

Francis Bacon Analogy

The analogy between crucifixion and butchering present in the early version is continued in the cross-shaped animal cadaver. The male figure seated in front of it, seemingly protected by a canopy, now wears normal street clothes; his mouth is no longer distended in a scream but nearly effaced by a paint smear, as in a blurred photograph. This is a man who has lost his bearings. The sense of human isolation suggested by the balustrade in the earlier version has deepened. A cooler palette and simplified background lend the later composition greater concision, while the movement of the figure is more strongly emphasized.