New Francis Bacon Exhibition Announced By Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Francis Bacon Exhibition

A new exhibition of the work of Francis Bacon titled Francis Bacon: From Picasso to Velázquez has been announced by the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. The show presents a selection of nearly 80 of the Anglo-Irish artist’s most compelling paintings, including some of his most important and yet least exhibited paintings. These are displayed alongside the works of the classic masters from French and Spanish culture who played an influential role in his career, including El Greco, Diego Velázquez, Toulouse-Lautrec, Pablo Picasso and Alberto Giacometti.

The exhibition will span six decades of Bacon’s career over eight rooms, including his portraits, nudes, crucifixions, landscapes and bullfighting series, offering a new perspective on the artist’s oeuvre by highlighting the impact that French and Spanish cultures exerted on his art. Visitors will be able to see one of his earliest works Composition (Figure) (1933) alongside Picasso’s series of bathers, the monumental triptych Three Studies of Figures on Beds (1972) with John Philip’s La Bomba (1863) and the Portrait of a Dwarf (1975) with Velázquez’s The Buffoon el Primo (1664).

The human figure is at the core of most of his compositions, which reflect a stark existentialist view of the individual. Bacon painted extraordinarily expressive portraits with a large dose of authenticity, which means being alive in all senses and with all its consequences. He sought to capture the mystery of life and reduce reality to its essence, synthesizing it in the guise of paint. 

Bacon created a new universe of images conceived via literature, film, art, and his own life using a totally unique language, reflecting human vulnerability with utter rawness. The exhibition will show how Bacon broke down many barriers that were deeply entrenched at the time, placing human beings in front of a mirror in which we could see ourselves in a raw, violent way. It will become apparent how Bacon was an avid consumer of French and Spanish culture, developing obsessions with the literary and visual works of the countries’ masters from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, appropriating and twisting their visual language in order to create his own unique style.

The exhibition is organised by Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in collaboration with Grimaldi Forum Monaco, curated by Martin Harrison.

Francis Bacon from PICASSO TO VELÁZQUEZ 9·30·2016/1·8·20 2017 Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

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