Art - Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon, an existentialist artist, like Dubuffet, Giacometti and Balthus. A controversial figure in twentieth century art, who dared to paint figurative art in the decades of abstract-expressionism and pop-art.
Bacon was born in Dublin in 1909. His father was a horse-breeder, who didn't understand his son. Francis Bacon had a miserable youth, he was asthmatic and his parents didn't treat him very well. His father, for example, asked his men to beat his son, they also abused him sexually. At that time, Bacon found out that he was homosexual.
He left his parental home when he was 16 and went to London. The artist also stayed in Berlin and moved to Paris from there, where he made a living as interior designer. He visited a Picasso exhibition and was deeply impressed. Pablo Picasso was the only contemporary painter who influenced his work.
Bacon moved back to London in 1929 and focussed more on his work as a painter. He exhibited his work in 1930 together with fellow-artist Roy de Maistre. Success and recognition came after painting a 'Crucifixion' in 1933. This drew the attention of a critic named Herbert Read. Around that time, there was a solo-exhibition in the Transition Gallery (the cellar of a friend of Bacon).
He began to collect images which impressed him, those pictures (like the hand-painted prints in a medical study on the diseases of the mouth) influenced his work and style.
Bacon wanted to join in the 'International Surrealist Exhibition' in 1936, but his work was refused, because it was 'insufficiently surrealistic'. In spite of this setback, he exhibited at the important ' Exhibition of Young British Painters'.
Bacon was rejected as medically unfit for military service and stayed in London as a member of the home guard and built up a reputation as one of the leading Bohemians in London.
In 1944, Bacon started to paint his famous 'Three studies for the Base of Crucifixion', which was exhibited in 1945. Francis Bacon had a predilection for triptychs - like 'Three studies for the Base of a Crucifixion' - and there's some christian symbolism in his art, but Bacon was a militant atheist.
After the war, he went to Monte Carlo, where he gambled and drank much. Tate Gallery bought 'Three studies for the Base of a Crucifixion' in 1953, after Bacons trip to his mother in South Africa. He stayed in London permanently, where he became the leader of a small group of Bohemians, including figures like Isabel Rawsthorne and Lucian Freud - his lover. Bacon painted a lot of portraits of his friends (like George Dyer and Isabel Rawsthorne), but he never asked them to sit for him, he preferred working with photographs.
Francis Bacon died in 1992, after a troubled life.