BACON, Francis (Dublin 1909 – Madrid 1992)

Renowned for triptychs of breathtaking intensity, Francis Bacon paints a ravaged world in which violence and tragedy emerge at every stroke of the brush. He confessed to being pursued by Aeschylus’s line: “The smell of human blood smiles out at me..” His oeuvre moves between vast narrative cycles — filled with friends, sitters, and homages to Velázquez, Van Gogh, and Picasso — and anguished portraits, whose figures appear bent, broken, and swallowed up by the very fabric of the paint.