Francis Bacon at Tate Britain, Linbury Galleries, London, until 4th Jan

Exhibition Description:

This exhibition marks the artist's centenary in 2009 and is the first UK retrospective since 1985. It will afford a chance to re-assess Bacon's work in the light of the new research that has emerged since uncovering his studio and its contents following the artist's death. The retrospective comprises around 60 works and covers the artist's career. It will bring together the most important works from each period of his life and will be the largest display to date that examines Bacon's sources, processes and thoughts.

Francis Bacon is renowned as one of the 20th century's greatest painters of the figure. His paintings of the 1940s bore witness to the shattered psychology of that time and shot him to prominence that hardly diminished over the next fifty years. Bacon has captured sexuality, violence and isolation in his unflinching depictions of the anxieties of the modern condition.

This exhibition provides the chance to explore Bacon's philosophy that man is simply another animal in this godless world and is also subject to the same natural urges of violence, lust and fear that are physically evident in the body. Bacon's output was primarily dominated by the human body yet these works will be displayed, with a number of his representations of animals and visceral landscapes. The exhibition brings together many celebrated paintings and triptychs including Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, 1944 (Tate Collection), Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X 1953 (Des Moines Art Center, Iowa), Crucifixion 1965 (Staatsgalerie Moderner Kunst, Munich) and In Memory of George Dyer 1971 (Fondation Beyler, Basel).

Francis Bacon (b. 1909, Dublin, of English parents) spent his time in London, Berlin and Paris before the war. He began working as an interior designer, and began to paint around 1928. Bacon destroyed most of his early works but emerged in 1945 as a major force with his Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion. He soon became noted as one of the most important artists of his generation. Representing Britain at the Venice Biennale 1954, Bacon went on to have retrospective exhibitions at the Tate Gallery in 1962 and 1985, the Grand Palais, Paris, in 1971 and the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1989.

This retrospective is curated by Matthew Gale, Head of Displays, Tate Modern, and Chris Stephens, Head of Displays, Tate Britain. The exhibition will then tour to Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid from 3 Feb - 19 Apr 09. This will be the first ever major Bacon retrospective in Madrid, the city where he died in 1992 and which houses the great works of the artists he most admired, Velazquez and Goya. The exhibition will then travel to the US to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York from 18 May - 16 Aug 09.

Description:

Image: Francis Bacon
Study of a Dog 1952
© Tate
Oil on canvas
218 x 158 x 11 cm

Full Contact Details:

Tate Britain
Linbury Galleries
Admission £12.50 ( £10.50 concessions)
Opening hours: Tate Britain is open daily, 10.00-17.50
Exhibitions 10.00-17.40 (last admission 17.00)
Late night opening on the first Friday of each month - last admission 21.00
Public information number: 020 7887 8888.