Francis Bacon (1909 to 1992) was an Irish-born British painter whose distorted, screaming figures changed what postwar figure painting could look like.
Francis Bacon at a glance
- Born: 28 October 1909, Dublin, Ireland
- Died: 28 April 1992, Madrid, Spain
- Nationality: Irish-born British
- Medium: Oil painting
- Style: Figurative painting with extreme distortion, often in triptych form
- Known for: Screaming popes, crucifixion triptychs, portraits of friends and lovers
- Education: Self-taught; early schooling largely by private tutors
- Notable recognition: British Pavilion at the 1954 Venice Biennale; retrospectives at Tate (1962), the Grand Palais (1971) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1975)
Bacon was born in Dublin on 28 October 1909 to English parents, his father a racehorse trainer. Chronic asthma disrupted his schooling, and much of his education came from private tutors.
He spent time in Berlin and Paris, then settled in London in 1928 and worked as an interior decorator. Bacon never attended art school. He taught himself to paint and destroyed much of his early work.
The turning point came in 1944 with Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, painted in oil on three boards and now at Tate Britain. Its writhing, half-human creatures made his name once the war ended, and recognition followed in 1945. In 1971 the critic John Russell argued that English painting could be divided into the years before this work and the years after it.
Bacon built his pictures in series and often as triptychs, returning again and again to a few subjects. His screaming popes grew out of Velázquez’s portrait of Innocent X, which he bent into something nightmarish, and the 1953 Study after Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X is among the best known. Faces smear, bodies twist, and figures sit inside flat, strongly coloured rooms drawn with thin geometric lines. He borrowed from Muybridge’s photographs of bodies in motion, medical textbooks, X-rays and film stills.
His reputation grew through major showings: the British Pavilion at the 1954 Venice Biennale, Tate in 1962, the Grand Palais in Paris in 1971 and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1975. Tate Britain marked his centenary with a retrospective in 2008. In 2013, Bacon’s 1969 triptych Three Studies of Lucian Freud, a portrait of the painter Lucian Freud, sold at Christie’s in New York for $142.4 million, then the highest price paid for an artwork at auction.
In a 1955 statement for the Museum of Modern Art, Bacon described what he wanted from a picture, hoping it would look as if a human being had passed between the figures:
“…like a snail, leaving a trail of the human presence…”
Francis Bacon, 1955 statement for the Museum of Modern Art
Another fact: Bacon kept a still of the screaming nurse from Sergei Eisenstein’s film Battleship Potemkin (1925) in his studio, and the open mouth became a recurring motif across his career.
Questions About Francis Bacon
Who was Francis Bacon?
Francis Bacon (1909 to 1992) was an Irish-born British painter, born in Dublin and died in Madrid, known for distorted figure paintings. He is not the same person as the 16th-century English philosopher of the same name.
What is Francis Bacon known for?
Bacon is known for raw, distorted figures, his screaming popes and his triptychs. His 1944 work Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion brought him recognition after the Second World War.
What style did Francis Bacon paint in?
Bacon painted figures in oil with extreme distortion. Faces and bodies smear and twist, and the figures sit inside flat, strongly coloured spaces framed by geometric lines. He often worked in triptych form.
Where did Francis Bacon study?
Bacon did not study at an art school. He was self-taught, with much of his early education coming from private tutors, and he began painting in London in the late 1920s.
What are Francis Bacon’s most important works?
His most discussed works include Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944), Painting (1946), Study after Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1953) and Three Studies of Lucian Freud (1969).
Study after Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X, 1953, by Francis Bacon, in the collection of the Des Moines Art Center. Francis Bacon painting of a contorted pink nude on a yellow oval platform, set against a flat green ground.
