Exhibition honors 50 years of work by artist Francis Bacon

Beginning January 29, 2022, the Royal Academy of Arts in London invites visitors to view Francis Bacon's (1909-1992) visceral paintings that erase the boundary between man and beast. On view through April 17, 2022, Francis Bacon: Man and Beast shows just how fascinated Bacon was with the movement of animals, hoping to get closer to the true nature of man by observing their uninhibited behavior. The focus of this impressive exhibition is therefore Bacon's irrepressible fascination with animals: how it both shaped and distorted his approach to the human body; how his figures, captured in the most extreme moments of existence, are barely recognizable as human or animal. In this way, his works seek to remind us that our primal instincts lie just beneath the surface. A highlight of the exhibition, which spans Bacon's 50-year career, are some of his earliest works as well as his final painting and three bullfighting paintings, exhibited together for the first time.

Born in Dublin on October 28, 1909, Francis Bacon is one of the most important representational painters of the 20th century. Due to his homosexuality, which was considered illegal during his lifetime, the young Bacon escaped from his family at the age of 16 and stayed in Berlin and Paris before moving to London. Here the self-taught artist soon belonged to the artistic scene, which also included Lucian Freud, Isabel Rawsthorne and John Deakin. The British painter is known for his grotesque, emotionally charged and figurative motifs as well as for the depiction of deformed human bodies.