PARIS, Aug 13 — The Parisian museum held its last major exhibition dedicated to the Irish painter in 1996.
More than 20 years later, “Bacon: Books and Painting” will focus on works produced by Francis Bacon in the last two decades of his career.
It will feature 60 paintings spanning from 1971 to 1992, including 12 triptychs, a series of portraits, and self-portraits.
The last two decades of Bacon’s career were particularly significant, as they were marked by a simplification and intensification of his painting style. His colours acquired new depth, drawn from a unique chromatic register of yellow, pink, and saturated orange, as seen in his 1983 canvas “Sand Dune”.
The death of his long-time partner George Dyer, who committed suicide in 1971, left haunting echoes in Bacon’s ensuing paintings. His “Black Triptychs” series, which was painted in memory of his deceased lover, notably depicts two seated figures and their coupling in a life-and-death struggle.
The exhibition “Bacon: Books and Painting” will also examine the influence of literature in Francis Bacon’s oeuvre. Curator Didier Ottinger included several recorded readings of excerpts of texts taken from the painter’s library. Among them are works by T.S. Eliot, Mathieu Amalric, Nietzsche, Bataille, Valérie Dreville, and more. These authors had a considerable impact on the Bacon’s work, inspiring recurring images and motifs such as the Furies of Greek mythology. The influence of the ancient Greek tragedian Aeschylus is particularly visible in the 1944 painting “Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion,” as well as in 1981’s “Triptych Inspired by the Oresteia of Aeschylus.”
“Bacon: Books and Painting” will be on view from September 11 through January 20, 2020 at Paris’ Centre Pompidou. Additional information is available on the museum’s website. — AFP-Relaxnews
