Trained as an interior designer, Francis Bacon took his first steps as an artist in 1927, having been impressed by a Picasso exhibition. Within a short time, he produced numerous drawings and watercolors on his own initiative. The only teacher the otherwise self-taught Bacon can be said to have had was the cubist painter Roy de Maistre.
Bacon's paintings of vulnerable and tortured bodies, often depicted in the form of tryptichs, were based mostly on photographs. He used distortion, mutilation and the simultaneous superimposition of several phases of movement to reveal the agony of human existence.
Bacon would not allow his cleaning lady into his studio. He sometimes used the dust
from the floor and other surfaces to create texture in his paintings.
Francis Bacon (L) with Lucien Freud.
"To reveal the agony of human existence" seems especially true. Accidentally stumbled upon this blog while researching a collage project for an art class.
ReplyDeleteAnyways, I wholeheartedly agree! Bacon was absolutely brutal, as an artist, although I find the contrast in his later works (featuring more solemn and modest expressions of sadness or suffering, as opposed to pain/meat) just as appealing.