Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon was born in 1909 in Dublin to a father who was a racehorse trainer and a mother who was the heiress of an industrial family. A sickly child suffering from asthma, mistreated by his father who rejected him even more when his homosexuality was revealed, Francis Bacon left the family home at the age of sixteen. He became a decorator while painting canvases with a surrealist influence. His first solo exhibition in 1934 did not receive a great response, and it was not until 1945 and the scandal caused by the violence of his triptych "Three studies for figures at the foot of a crucifixion" that his paintings were noticed and purchased by museums. In 1957, his first exhibition was held in Paris and in 1962 he exhibited at the Tate Gallery in London. The triptych form became his favorite mode of expression, and he often produced his works in the form of series around themes such as the crucifixion, the self-portrait, or models of friends (George Dyer, Isabel Rawsthorne). These bodies or faces are always represented in a mutilated, tortured, deformed way, as if torn apart, but without going into abstraction. Francis Bacon died in 1992 during a trip to Madrid.