Biography
Childhood and education
Francis Bacon was born in Dublin in Ireland2 English British parents . The young Francis was a sickly child with asthma , his father teaches rigorously. This is farmer and horse trainer .
At the outbreak of war in 1914 , he was posted to the War Office in London, the family lives therefore between London and Dublin. Can not attend regular classes , the young boy has a tutor. Francis Bacon is rejected by his father when his homosexuality was discovered – a story told that his father would have sent the family home at the age of 16 years after caught trying underwear his mother . However, his mother pays a regular pension that allows him to live London3 him.
The beginnings of the painter
Leaving England , Bacon spent several months in Berlin and Paris , where he led a bohemian lifestyle , exercising various trades including the painter – decorator apartments . He realizes drawings and watercolors . Returning to
London in 1928 , he exhibited in his studio in Queensbury Mews . It installs as a decorator and painted his first works under the strong influence of surrealism and Picasso, he was able to admire the works during his stay in Paris at the Paul Rosenberg Gallery. Picasso ‘s drawings after this time, visible in his notebooks , and show how Bacon was inspired , and the similarities with the work of the latter .
Bacon is a self-taught artist. Among his influences are not only recognized but also Picasso Velasquez , Rembrandt or Poussin . In an interview , he said that the influence of Surrealism on his work did not come from the painting but films like Luis Buñuel Un Chien Andalou .
In 1930, The Studio newspaper wrote an article after the exhibition of decorative arts ( furniture, paintings and gouaches ) he organized in his studio. In 1931, he gradually abandoned his job as a decorator to devote himself exclusively to painting , to survive he saw small businesses. In 1933 , he painted Crucifixion which is reproduced in the magazine Art Now .
In 1934 held his first solo exhibition at the Transition Gallery, which is a failure. Bacon thinks stop painting .
In 1936, he was honored by the International Surrealist exhibition organized by André Breton. He was selected in 1937 for the group exhibition » Young British Painters » with Graham Sutherland and Victor Pasmore .
Assigned to civil defense in 1941, declared unfit for military service , Bacon settled for a time in the campaign and then returned to London and rented a studio in Kensington. He destroyed all his work , retaining only a dozen canvases .
After the war
In 1945, Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion causes scandal during exposure Lefevre Gallery. Table of rare expressive violence , shocks in the aftermath of the Second World where we prefer to forget the images of horror that it has engendered War. These bodies collected in the extreme, twisted and squashed , muscular, dislocated , torn , clutching these distortions , these paroxysmal spasms , these almost acrobatic poses, are first signs of nerve flashes and a furious passion, almost athletic , more somatic and psychological animality of the mysterious anthropoid lonely and desolate which is in every man. The table is acquired in 1953 by the Tate Gallery.
Bacon went to live in Monte Carlo in 1946. His painting Painting in 1946 was bought by the New York Modern Art
Museum in 1948 . He began the famous series of » heads » is inspired by Velasquez for the series » Popes » and uses Muybridge ‘s photographs as inspiration . He met the painter Lucian Freud4 he painted the first portrait in 1951.
In 1952 , Bacon exhibits inspired landscapes of Provence and South Africa , which he visited to visit her mother, the previous year. In 1953 , he painted two wrestlers .
In 1954, with Ben Nicholson and Lucian Freud , Bacon represents Britain at the XXVII Venice Biennale. In 1955 held the first retrospective at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London . In 1956 he made a trip to Morocco .
1957 is the year of his first exhibition in Paris and the creation of the series » Van Gogh » inspired by the painter’s life and the destruction of his paintings during the Second World War.
In 1958 , he signed his contract with the Marlborough Gallery , which became his dealer . The gallery exhibitions and retrospectives succeed from this date.
7 Reece Mews in South Kensington [edit | edit the code]
In 1959 , Bacon participated in the Sao Paulo Biennial . In 1961, the gallery moved to a two-storey house , 7 Reece Mews in South Kensington , London. His studio is located upstairs in a small room that he never cleans and that clutters tubes strikes paintings and books , magazines, newspapers , used photographs, stained which it is based .
In 1964 , Bacon painted his first large triptych , Three Studies for a Crucifixion , which is acquired by the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The triptych is a conventional form of his work. He met George Dyer who becomes his friend, his confidant and role model for many paintings . It was during the first retrospective of Bacon in Paris at the Grand Palais in 1972, that Dyer committed suicide in their hotel room . Bacon dedicated to him a series of triptychs.
Influenced by his friend Michel Leiris and his taste for violence5 Bacon performs three studies for bullfighting in 1969 , including Study for Bullfight No. 2, now in the Musée des beaux- arts de Lyon , who served for poster of the feria de Nîmes 19926 . Jean- Claude Lebenztejn describes Study for Bullfight No. 1 as an array where: « The public in the arena seems like coulissant7 projected on a panel , » whereas in the second version ( Study 2 ), the panel is white and a dark shadow seems flotter7 . Violence, but also the sexual aspect of bullfighting attracted Bacon, who considered , like boxing , as « a wonderful appetizer for amour7 . »
Throughout his career , Bacon refined his style , leaving the images of graphic violence from its beginnings to prefer « paint rather than the cry of horror » , advocating that violence must reside in the painting itself , and not in the scene it shows.
On a trip to Madrid , Francis Bacon died in 1992. His workshop is given by his last companion , John Edwards, the Museum of Modern Art in Dublin . The workshop is photographed , then moved and rebuilt identically .
Francis Bacon was a prolific artist who has left many audio and video interviews and documentaries, which he expresses with clarity and simplicity to what touching him the art of painting.
He was also known to be a common figure of London pub The French .
CARMIN AUBRUN 