Bacon, Francis
Francis Bacon was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1909. His family moved to London for 5 years in 1914 and returned back to Ireland in 1919. They went to England in 1924 again. Young Francis travelled to France in 1927 and lived in Paris and Chantilly. He saw Pablo Picasso (1881-1975) exhibition as well as works by Chaim Soutine (1893-1943) and Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978) all of which had a lasting effect on him.
Upon his return to London in 1929 Francis set himself up as an interior designer featuring in “The 1930 Look of British Decoration” in the Studio magazine. At the same time, Bacon started to show his paintings in his studio abandoning his design work in 1931. He took part in his first group show in 1933 when one of his painting, Crucifixion, was reproduced in Herbert Read’s book Art Now on the strength of which Michael Sadler, an influential collector from Leeds, commissioned him another version of Crucifixion. After disappointing review of his solo show in the Times in 1934, Bacon destroyed many of his paintings but decided to continue his career as an artist.
Francis took part in numerous group shows from 1934 to 1944 and became friends with Graham Sutherland (1903-1980), Roy De Maistre (1894-1968) and Lucian Freud (1922-2011). He was given renewed confidence by the visit by Kenneth Clark, Director of the National Gallery and the most influential supporter of contemporary British art, to his studio in 1944. Bacon had his successful shows at Lefevre Gallery in London in 1945 and 1946. He moved to Monaco the same year and resided there till 1950. In 1948 Erica Brausen opened her Hanover Gallery in London and started to represent Francis Bacon with selling one of his painting to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1949 Bacon had his first personal show at her gallery and it was a resounding commercial success. Tate Gallery acquired his painting in 1950.
Bacon represented Britain at the XXVII Venice Biennale together with Freud and Ben Nicholson (1894-1982) in 1954. In 1958 Francis had three consecutive successful solo exhibitions in Turin, Milan and Rome which marked the start of his frequent visits to Italy. He also signed a contract with Marlborough Fine Art the same year which required all of his oil paintings to be solely sold through this gallery. Bacon had his first retrospective exhibition at the Tate Gallery in 1962 and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Art Institute in Chicago in 1963.
His fame and recognition was growing and John Russel published his book ‘Francis Bacon’ in 1971 which became the main text on the artist. Bacon had a personal exhibition in Mexico in 1977, Caracas, Madrid and Barcelona in 1978. It was on one of his many trips to Italy when Bacon met Cristiano Lovatelli Rovarino in Rome. Cristiano became his long-life Italian companion and friend to whom he sent, entrusted and bequeathed the body of his numerous pastels, collages and drawings on paper created from 1979 till the artist’s untimely death in 1992. They were first exhibited at Galleria d’Arte Nanni in Bologna, Italy in 1981 and were shown in major Italian cities, Switzerland, Argentina, Portugal, Mexico, Brazil, Czech Republic, Germany and United Kingdom ever since.
In 1983 Bacon had his retrospective exhibition at the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo and his second major Tate retrospective in London in 1985. It travelled to Stuttgart and Berlin in Germany in 1986. Another major retrospective of the artist was held in Moscow in 1988 and in Washington D.C., Los Angeles and the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1989.
Francis Bacon is now considered the most important British and one of the most important international painters of the 20th century and his works concerned with crucifixions, popes and human figures are present in all major international museums.
