Sell at Auction with Phillips
We are inviting consignment submissions for Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
Irish-British • 1909-1992
Biography
Francis Bacon was a larger-than-life figure during his lifetime and remains one now more than ever. Famous for keeping a messy studio, and even more so for his controversial, celebrated depictions of papal subjects and bullfights, often told in triptychs, Bacon signified the blinding dawn of the Modern era. His signature blurred portraits weren't murky enough to stave off his reputation as highly contentious—his paintings were provocations against social order in the people's eye. But, Bacon often said, "You can't be more horrific than life itself."
In conversation with yet challenging the conventions of Modern art, Bacon was known for his triptychs brutalizing formalist truths, particularly Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, which Bacon debuted in London in 1944, and Three Studies of Lucian Freud, which became famous when it set the record for most expensive work of art at auction at the time it sold in 2013.
Insights
Bacon's Three Studies of Lucian Freud once held rank as the world's most expensive painting when it sold for a staggering $142.4 million dollars in 2013.
Bacon's final painting is now attributed as Study of a Bull, 1991.
Another controversial motif of the artist's career was his exploration of homoeroticism and sexual tableaus through the male gaze.
Bacon is, in fact, a descendent of the seventeenth century philosopher of the same name.
"I should have been, I don't know, a con-man, a robber or a prostitute. But it was vanity that made me choose painting—vanity and chance."