Francis Bacon: From the Gutter to the Ritz

By Frank Woodgate

Francis Bacon was an Irish-born British figurative painter known for his raw, unsettling imagery. Bacon was regarded as Britain's greatest 20th Century artist, and his dramatic images can be exquisitely beautiful and shocking at the same time.  Perhaps more than any other artist, he captured the darkness at the heart of the human experience.

Focusing on the human form, his subjects included crucifixions, portraits of popes, self-portraits, and portraits of close friends, with abstracted figures sometimes isolated in geometrical structures.

He said that he saw images "in series", and his work, which numbers in the region of 590 extant paintings along with many others he destroyed, typically focused on a single subject for sustained periods, often in triptych or diptych formats.

Come to learn how his work explores abjection, nihilism and hope!