The Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation supports a major Bacon exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris

The Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation is taking part in the exhibition ’Francis Bacon: Books and Painting’ – to be presented from 11 September 2019 to 20 January 2020 at the Centre Pompidou in Paris - by contributing to the exhibition catalogue and the series of lectures, the ‘Bacon Book Club’ to be held at the Centre Pompidou during the exhibition period.

The last major French exhibition dedicated to the ardently Francophile Bacon was held in 1996 at the Centre Pompidou. More than twenty years later, ‘Francis Bacon: Books and Painting’ presents paintings executed from 1971, the year of the legendary retrospective held at the Grand Palais, to his final works in 1992. Didier Ottinger is the curator of this innovative exploration of the influence of literature in Francis Bacon’s œuvre. 

There are six rooms along the visitor route, placing literature at the heart of the exhibition. The event includes readings of excerpts of texts taken from Francis Bacon’s library.  The exhibition at the Centre Pompidou focuses on works produced by Bacon in the last two decades of his career. It consists of sixty paintings (including twelve triptychs, in addition to a series of portraits and self-portraits) from major private and public collections. From 1971 to 1992 (the year of the artist’s death), his painting style was marked by its simplification and intensification. His colours acquired new depth, drawn from a unique chromatic register of yellow, pink and saturated orange.

1971 was a turning point for Bacon. His Grand Palais retrospective earned him international acclaim, while the tragic death of his partner, two days before the exhibition opening, gave way to a period marked by guilt and represented by a proliferation of the symbolic and mythological form of the Erinyes (the Furies of Greek mythology) in his work. The ‘Black’ Triptychs painted in memory of his deceased friend (In Memory of George Dyer, 1971, Triptych–August 1972 and Triptych, May–June 1973), all presented at the exhibition, commemorate this loss. 

More information on the exhibition here

More information on the ‘Bacon Book Club’ here

Francis Bacon, Triptych August 1972