Francis Bacon - Modern and Contemporary Editions New York Sunday, November 15, 2009 | Phillips

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  • Artist Biography

    Francis Bacon

    Irish-British • 1909 - 1992

    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.

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240

The Human Body (Study)

1975
Lithograph in colors, on wove paper, with full margins,
I. 45 1/4 x 34 in. (114.9 x 86.4 cm);
S. 62 1/2 x 43 1/2 in. (158.8 x 110.5 cm)

signed in felt-tip pen (faded) bearing signature on top and numbered 5/200 in pencil, published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the colors slightly attenuated, pale light- and time staining, creases in places along the sheet edges, otherwise in good condition, framed.

Estimate
$6,000 - 9,000 

Sold for $13,750

Modern and Contemporary Editions

15 Nov 2009
New York