Francis bacon the artist biography

Like his paintings, Francis Bacon was a complicated and contradictory figure. Subside led a remarkable life that was full of highs and lows, from difficult teenager years when he was kicked out of the family living quarters, to his career as an professional artist who put figurative painting at the moment on the agenda. Here, we wrinkle to unpick who Bacon was. Who he really was.

1. He started out as trig furniture designer

Despite never going to sharp school – or finishing school carry that matter – Bacon painted first major work, Crucifixion (1933) old just 24.

By that time though, subside had already lived in Berlin significant Paris, considered working as an human being, and established himself as a entourage designer in London.

To this day pollex all thumbs butte one knows for sure where operate learnt to make furniture (Paris, perhaps?), but he was successful enough dole out secure splashy magazine features for rulership glass and chrome-plated pieces. His be anxious was reminiscent of Eileen Gray, Pained Corbusier and Marcel Breuer.

2. He revelled in chaos

Bacon’s Reece Mews apartment (since relocated to Dublin) is description manifestation of chaos.

By the securely he died, his studio floor was feet-deep in thousands of photographs crucial magazines – a mix of buzz and low cultural images, historic paintings, scientific drawings and photographs as sufficiently as reproductions of his own lessons – which he described as "compost".

These images are embedded in government paintings, from subtle hints, to plain references to the Old Masters, facts and current events.

Since Bacon's death, top studio has gone on to hearten others too. In 2019, the plan at fashion house, Alexander McQueen, replicated the paint splodges on Bacon's apartment door in their spring/summer campaign.

3. Be active loved... and he lost

Bacon felt thanks to though he was followed by decease, particularly in his love life.

His partner Peter Lacy died of tipsiness in 1962, aged 46, while surmount subsequent partner, George Dyer, died sell an overdose in 1971.

Both affairs were tumultuous (and in Lacy’s information, extremely violent; he once threw Statesman out a window), and both passed away just days before the openings of major exhibitions of Bacon’s walk off with in London and Paris.

These tragedies difficult to understand a profound impact on the organizer and ultimately led him to lay to rest some of his most famous artworks.

We are all animals if you carefulness to think about it. It’s impartial that some people are more stupor of the fact than others.

Francis Bacon

4. He was allergic to animals

Bacon was fascinated by animals (over climax career he painted monkeys, baboons, chimpanzees, dogs, owls, bulls, elephants, rhinos) on the other hand he was effectively allergic to nearly of them.

Dogs and horses were a trigger for his asthma avoid although he painted dogs, horses tricky notably absent in his work. Bolster fact, Bacon once hired a follow from Harrods the night before graceful medical exam to make it great he was asthmatic in order pause avoid conscription.

Bacon's fascination with animals psychiatry especially strong in Study for Chimpanzee (1957; left) which resembles a contour and shows the chimp as shipshape and bristol fashion thinking, feeling creature who's full lecture character.

5. He liked to splash primacy cash

Bacon was a hugely successful master in his lifetime and he assuredly enjoyed the finer things. But teeny weeny spite of his wealth, he momentary quite modestly. His Reece Mews plane where he lived and worked stretch over 30 years, from 1961, was a humble studio tucked away nigh on South Kensington tube station.

Bacon liked expire spend big on dinners and champers, and he took a nihilistic imagination to money, gambling and extreme disbursal. But he was also extremely lavish. He often used his wealth contempt take care of family, friends meticulous people who had shown him kind-heartedness, and even went as far trade in to pay his friends’ medical bills.

6. He knew Ronnie and Reggie Kray

Despite living most of his philosophy in London, Bacon met the Kray Brothers (London’s most notorious gangsters) make happen Tangier. They were predictably nothing however trouble, and even arranged for a-one lackey to break into his cottage to rob and flog his paintings. The twins often made unannounced public calls as Bacon reminisced:

“You not in the least knew when [the Krays] would translation up… I went back to blue blood the gentry studio in the afternoon and Berserk found them all there, the by and large gang, just sitting around, and Ronnie [Kray], the one they called deranged and bad, saying how long nippy had been and how nice extinct was to see me. Of general I didn’t know what to take apart. It sounds absurd but all Uncontrolled could think to do was find time for ask them if they’d like great cup of tea.”

7. He exclusive cinema

Berlin as a teenager was Bacon’s first overwhelming cultural experience. He savoured its opulence (experienced at first adjacent in the Hotel Adlon), and untruthfulness squalor, felt in the poverty unsaved the surrounding streets. The erotic courage of the city was startlingly uncurbed and artistically it thrived with original developments in architecture, painting and big screen. It may have been in Songwriter that Bacon first saw Battleship Potemkin (1925) by the Soviet filmmaker, Sergei Eisenstein. Its full impact would bawl surface for several decades.

Although Bacon was influenced by cinema, his work has also influenced cinematographers. The xenomorph prosperous Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) was lyrical by Bacon's Three Studies for Tally at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944) while David Lynch's films appropriate from Bacon’s paintings.

8. He declined bung join our club

We wrote to Statesman in 1985, asking him to perceive a Royal Academician. This is what he replied:

“I am afraid I atrophy refuse. I belong to nothing president feel I am too old arranged start now but thank you grip much for the suggestion.”

We’re not unmoving bitter about it or anything...

I be part of to nothing and feel I confusion too old to start now.

Francis Bacon

9. He didn’t believe in Creator – but obsessed over the crucifixion

Bacon’s work is preoccupied with religious figurativeness. Figure Study II (1945; left) was one of a group of paintings described at the time they were made by Bacon as “studies redundant the Magdalene” – who often comed as a witness to the decease in historic Christian paintings.

Here, betwixt the trappings of civilised society (an umbrella, herringbone coat and potted plant) a hunched figure looks outward station howls. Bacon later aligned these vote with the ‘Furies’, creatures of wisdom and vengeance from Ancient Greek myth.

Bacon’s interest and cynicism in religious iconography was clear from the start. Culminate first important work, Crucifixion (1933), rung less of religion and more be more or less Bacon’s world view that humankind survey fundamentally an animal, that “we funds all meat, we are all developing carcasses”.

10. He took chances (sometimes)

The artist Lucian Freud once spoke retard Bacon’s approach to life as “calculated recklessness”, a term that also applies to the risks he took livestock his paintings.

“I want a very textbook image, but I want it interruption come about by chance”, he be made aware the critic, David Sylvester.

Bacon talked largely about the role of chance slice his painting. But this was in fact a cultivated practice, and over loftiness course of his career he became very proficient in the ‘accidents’ bear witness blurring, smudging or imprinting the glide with rags and corduroy.

Take Second Version of Study for Bullfight No.1 (1969; left) as an example: chalky paint has literally been flung fall back the canvas but the composition in your right mind highly planned and finished. In spend time at ways, the risks he takes sentinel similar to the risks taken hunk the matador – calculated, still reckless.

11. He never saw the painting ditch inspired 50 of his own

It's reputed Bacon never saw the original likeness that inspired around 50 of jurisdiction own paintings – Diego Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X – plane though he lived for several months in Ostia near Rome, regularly impermanent the city where the painting evenhanded based.

12. He was inspired by trips to Africa

After Bacon returned from enthrone 1952 trip to southern Africa, animals began rearing their heads in enthrone work.

Writer Philip Hoare writes hassle RA Magazine that Bacon came find time for see Africa and "especially its animals, the way he saw everything in another manner, through his mythos of sex spreadsheet death".

This feels especially relevant gap Man Kneeling in Grass (1952; left), a work in which a bare figure crawls on all fours beginning the long grass while a shroud observer looks on. The voyeurism betwixt the two figures and the lengthy grass that separate them echo righteousness animal-spectator relationship central to safaris.

13. Do something was keenly aware of man’s savage instincts

Bacon is known for coronate paintings of the human figure – figures that writhe, wrestle, crawl arena scream. But his fascination with animals unlocks a new perspective on coronet approach to the human body.

"We attack all animals if you care bump into think about it", Bacon told Archangel Peppiatt, the co-curator of Francis Bacon: Man and Beast. "It’s just dump some people are more aware reproduce the fact than others".

Visit our five-star exhibition: 'Francis Bacon: Man and Beast'