In the first semester of 2008 auctions, Francis Bacon was one of the protagonists par excellence.  In London last June, “Study for Heas of George Dyer” executed by the artist from Dublin in 1967 was the highlight at Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Sale. But “Triptych, 1976” was even more important, realizing in May an extremely important record in the world of art: the canvas, sold by Sotheby’s for 86,281,00 dollars, set the new record for a work of contemporary art, breaking the record of “White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavander on Rose)” sold last year by Sotheby’s New York for 72,84 million dollars.
As a modern Caravaggio, the Irish Francis Bacon has become a true icon of the damned artist. Credit for this goes to a myth fuelled by himself and his life: the contrasts with his father, his journeys in the Thirties, his homosexuality, his tragic loves, his passion for gambling and pubs. His fame increased after his death in Madrid in 1992, stoked up by the extraordinary reappearance of some of his works in Toni Shafrazi’s New York gallery  in 1999 and by a sharp rise in quotations. Everybody will remember when in May 2007, at Sotheby’s New York, the painting “Study From Innocent X” executed in 1962 sold for 52,680,000 dollars, setting the artist’s personal record, then thrashed by “Tryptich 1976”.
Sex, violence and solitude. The three elements that reflect the condition of the contemporary human being.  A sort of animal at the mercy of a world without certainties, subject to the natural threatening of pain and fear.  A man whose Self is reflected in deformed and disjointed flesh.  The same “deformations” that always characterized Bacon’s figures, existentialist painter who in the fleshing of faces found his greatness.  A sublime master that made the author fascinating, whose entire career, which started in the Forties and ended in the Nineties, will be explored by an extraordinary exhibition organized by the Tate Gallery until 4th January 2009. The museum had already organized other exhibitions dedicated to Bacon (in 1962 an in 1985) and some time ago it bought 14 paintings and 36 drawings by the master.
Featuring 70 paintings, the event will present in an exhaustive way Francis Bacon’s artistic life, as one of the greatest artists of the second half of the twentieth century.
The exhibition aims at highlighting the importance of Bacon’s oeuvre, a painter who always listened to the human voice, the cry of agony.  Yet Bacon never had, in his mind, the intention to create tragic art but he only wanted to testify reality through his paintings.  The art of painting, according to the Irish artist, now free and not forced to do reportages, is no longer the carrier of messages, but only has the task of translating sensations in the most persuasive way possible. 
The retrospective to be held at the Tate has an anthological character and traces Francis Bacon’s entire artistic life.  A visionary diary represented by Francis Bacon’s image stories, this artist who always painted on the basis of personal and intimate experiences.  There is his debut in the Thirties, when he entered the art scene as an autodidact after brief studies at the Dean Close School of Chestelham and mainly after a series of travels. He was thirty years old with a past as a designer and his tragic art tended towards synthetic cubism of Picassan matrix.  Works that already show an interest in the ambiguity of the figurative plot.  And we can recognize works dated from the Forties.  Essential steps of this journey are represented by paintings from the first post-war period, when Bacon stated that all his works prior to 1945 had no value.  Indeed, the tragic war episodes had an impact on the artist’s imagination and psychology, and were reflected in his figuration, as he put the human figure through a process of de-humanization.
In this period youth memories of German Expressionism emerge, as well as Muybridge’s chronophotography and the power of Michelangelo’s male nudes.
In the Sixties his characters start to appear in a more defined and brightly illuminated space. They are no longer indefinite presences, but figures that have solidity and greater expressivity.
The large triptychs from the Sixties highlight how Bacon drives to exasperation the attention onto the subject, as if the artist pursues the only objective of penetrating the mysterious and dark meanders of the human soul.  A journey in the inner self of the individual and at the same time in the topicality of a disturbed society, marked by anonymous figures screaming in their cages, by sensuality and eroticism exhibited in a provocative way.
Finally, in the last years his visionary character is tempered by a less passionate but not less realistic conception. Bacon’s work undergoes a process of reduction to absence in its pictorial narration, as he still lets himself be carried away in a sort of figurative action painting under the impulse of his subconscious, and he denudes the contemporary man. (translated by Giorgina Arcuri)

From 11th September 2008 to 4th January 2009
FRANCIS BACON
At the Tate Britain, Linbury Galleries, Millbank, London.
Information: www.tate.org.uk
Opening times: from 10.00 am to 5.50 pm
Entrance: £12.50 full, £10.50 reduced.