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Our 6th Year Anniversary
ARTPIL / Prescription .141
We are rounding out our fifth year with nearly 3 million visits strong. A very exciting journey it has been, indeed.
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ARS22 / Living Encounters
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Art has the power to investigate society and present alternative interpretations of our shared world. The featured works raise...
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ARTPIL / Prescription .122
This would be the world we would inhabit for the time. And so holiday celebrations would toast on a...
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The Shadow Pandemic
Artpil / Prescription .121
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London Art Fair 2020
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For its 32nd edition London Art Fair brings together galleries, artists, curators, collectors, critics and enthusiasts for one week...
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International Women’s Day / 2019
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Francis Bacon
artist / painter

Francis Bacon (1909–92) was a maverick who rejected the preferred artistic style of abstraction of the era, in favour of a distinctive and disturbing realism. Growing up, Bacon had a difficult and ambivalent relationship with his parents – especially his father, who struggled with his son’s emerging homosexuality.

This contributed to a troubled childhood; he ran away from school, and subsequently drifted through the late 1920s and early 30s in London, Berlin and Paris, living off his allowance and occasional jobs, and dodging the rent. When in London, he lived in the epicentre of the bohemian scene; a regular in Soho, he led a hedonistic life.

From the mid-1940s his work met with critical success, establishing his reputation. Today, he is recognised as one of the most important painters of the twentieth century.

Bacon did not become an artist through any traditional route: he didn’t attend art school, for example, or serve a conventional apprenticeship. In early professional life, he worked in interior design, but decided to abandon this and take up painting after seeing an exhibition of Picasso’s at Paul Rosenberg’s Paris gallery in the late 20s. The representations of the body as bone-like, biomorphic structures revealed to Bacon the ‘possibilities of painting’. He later acknowledged Picasso as a key influence and reference point.

[Tate Modern]

Francis Bacon
artist / painter

Francis Bacon (1909–92) was a maverick who rejected the preferred artistic style of abstraction of the era, in favour of a distinctive and disturbing realism. Growing up, Bacon had a difficult and ambivalent relationship with his parents – especially his father, who struggled with his son’s emerging homosexuality.

This contributed to a troubled childhood; he ran away from school, and subsequently drifted through the late 1920s and early 30s in London, Berlin and Paris, living off his allowance and occasional jobs, and dodging the rent. When in London, he lived in the epicentre of the bohemian scene; a regular in Soho, he led a hedonistic life.

From the mid-1940s his work met with critical success, establishing his reputation. Today, he is recognised as one of the most important painters of the twentieth century.

Bacon did not become an artist through any traditional route: he didn’t attend art school, for example, or serve a conventional apprenticeship. In early professional life, he worked in interior design, but decided to abandon this and take up painting after seeing an exhibition of Picasso’s at Paul Rosenberg’s Paris gallery in the late 20s. The representations of the body as bone-like, biomorphic structures revealed to Bacon the ‘possibilities of painting’. He later acknowledged Picasso as a key influence and reference point.

[Tate Modern]

RELATED ARTICLES
Our 6th Year Anniversary
ARTPIL / Prescription .141
We are rounding out our fifth year with nearly 3 million visits strong. A very exciting journey it has been, indeed.
+
ARS22 / Living Encounters
Apr 8 – Oct 16, 2022
Art has the power to investigate society and present alternative interpretations of our shared world. The featured works raise...
+
New Year / 2021
ARTPIL / Prescription .122
This would be the world we would inhabit for the time. And so holiday celebrations would toast on a...
+
The Shadow Pandemic
Artpil / Prescription .121
This other virus, which has existed for a far greater period of time and whose rate of contagion is...
+
London Art Fair 2020
32nd Edition / JAN 22–26, 2020
For its 32nd edition London Art Fair brings together galleries, artists, curators, collectors, critics and enthusiasts for one week...
+
Irving Penn / Grand Palais, Paris
Sep 21, 2017 – Jan 29, 2018
This exhibition looks back over his seventy-year career, with over 200 photographic prints, all produced by the artist himself,...
+
We Are Here / MCA Chicago
Aug 19, 2017 – Apr 1, 2018
In honor of the MCA’s 50th anniversary, the museum presents We Are Here, a major three-part exhibition drawn from...
+
A Tale of Two Worlds
Jul 13 – Oct 14, 2018
A landmark event, this exhibition places masterpieces from the MMK Frankfurt collection in a deep and meaningful dialogue with...
+
Emma Portner / Femme Debout
Premiere / August 9, 2018
Emma Portner’s complex and delicate choreography draws on the grotesque, the artificial, and extreme emotionality, her extraordinary performances leaving...
+
Irving Penn
April 11 – March 26, 2019
Drawn from the collection of The Irving Penn Foundation the exhibition showcases some of the artist’s most iconic works...
+
International Women’s Day / 2019
March 8, 2019
Often our better halves, and without whom we could not be, we renew our commitment to engage. Once again,...
+