Bacon - Basic Art Series, Book

The suffering human body

Largely self-taught as an artist, Francis Bacon (1909-1992) developed a unique ability to transform inner, unconscious impulses into figurative forms and intensely claustrophobic compositions. Emerging to prominence in the post-World War II period, Bacon took the human body as his nominal subject, but a subject devastated, distorted and dismembered in such a way as to contort itself with its intense emotional content. With fluttering limbs, hollow voids and tomb-like growths, his captivating, often grotesque portraits are as much reflections on the trials and traumas of the human condition as they are character studies. These haunting forms were also among the first in the history of art to depict openly homosexual themes.

"I would like my images to look as if a human being had passed between them, like a snail, leaving a trace of human presence and the memory of past events." - Francis Bacon