Irish-born English painter Francis Bacon (1909-1992) created work that remains unmatched in raw force and vitality, and he is widely considered one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century. Critic Ronald Jones has described his themes as "the howling subjects with which Bacon struggled--Existentialism, Abstract Expressionism and the primal drama of a world newly acquainted with the Bomb." Bacon was preoccupied with probing the isolation and terror of the human condition, which he chiefly conveyed through a labored distortion of the human body. As Sam Hunter--who penned one of the first major essays on Bacon in 1950--writes in his introductory essay to this volume, "what has become increasingly clear with the test of time...is the clarity, durability and powerful authority of his visual discourse." This concise monograph presents an in-depth survey of Bacon's entire oeuvre. British artist Francis Bacon is one of the greatest painters of the twentieth century. His canvases of the 1940s bore witness to the traumatized psychology of the time and bestowed upon him a prominence that did not diminish in the course of his 50-year career. Recent auction sales have confirmed his works as some of the most sought-after of the Modern era.
La fuerza y vitalidad de su obra sitúan a Francis Bacon entre los mayores artistas del siglo XX. La vehemente intensidad de su pintura, que expresa la angustia existencial de sus contemporáneos, prácticamente no tiene equivalentes en la historia del arte. La obra de Bacon (1909-1992) incluye sin duda algunas de las pinturas más extraordinaria e intensas del arte moderno, que reflejan el aislamiento y terror de la condición humana, transmitidos por los rasgos distorsionados del cuerpo desnudo. Como Hunter escribe en su fundamental ensayo de introducción: lo que ha quedado progresivamente manifiesto con el paso del tiempo, cuadno Bacon ya es octogenario, es la claridad, estabilidad y vigorosa autoridad de su planteamiento visual. Esta cuidada monografía es una sucinta introducción a toda la carrera del artista británico.