Metropolitan Museum

Francis Bacon’s Provocative Works Featured in Major Retrospective Opening May 20 at Metropolitan Museum

The first major New York exhibition in 20 years devoted to Francis Bacon (British, 1909–1992)—one of the most important painters of the 20th century—will be presented at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from May 20 through August 16, 2009. Marking the 100th anniversary of the artist’s birth, Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective will bring together the most significant works from each period of the artist’s remarkable career. Drawn from public and private collections around the world, this landmark exhibition will consist of some 65 paintings, complemented by never-before-seen works and archival material from the Francis Bacon Estate, which will shed new light on the artist’s career and working practices. The Metropolitan Museum is the sole U.S. venue of the exhibition tour.

The exhibition was organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and Tate Britain, London, in partnership with the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. It is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. 

The exhibition’s loosely chronological structure will trace critical themes in Bacon’s work and explore his philosophy about mankind and the modern condition with visually arresting examples. The earliest group of works, from the 1940s and ’50s, focuses on the animalistic qualities of man, including: paintings of heads with snarling mouths (Head I, 1947–1948, The Metropolitan Museum of Art); images of men as pathetic and alone

(Study for a Portrait, 1953, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Germany); and the human figure portrayed as base and bestial (Figures in a Landscape, 1956, Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery, England). The exhibition also features numerous versions of Bacon’s iconic studies (1949–1953) after Diego Velázquez’s Portrait of Innocent X (1650). Mortality is addressed directly in his last works (Triptych, 1991, The Museum of Modern Art, New York).

In the 1960s, working in his classic style of much looser, colorful, and expressive painting, Bacon showed the human body exposed and violated as in, for example, Lying Figure, 1969 (Foundation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Switzerland). In the following decade he increasingly used narrative, autobiography, and myth to mediate ideas about violence and emotion, as in the 1971 painting In Memory of George Dyer (Foundation Beyeler) and Triptych Inspired by the Orestia of Aeschylus, 1981 (Astrup Fearnley Collection, Oslo, Norway).

A number of important works by Bacon will only be presented at the Metropolitan Museum, including Study for Portrait I, 1953 (Denise and Andrew Saul); Painting, 1946 (The Museum of Modern Art, New York); and Self Portrait, 1973 (private collection, courtesy Richard Nagy, London).

Central to an understanding of the artist’s working methods are the large caches of archival materials that have only become available since Bacon’s death, especially the contents of the artist’s famously cluttered London studio. A rich selection of 65 items from the studio, his estate, and other archives will be included in the exhibition. The objects include pages the artist tore from books and magazines, photographs, and sketches—all of which are source materials for the finished paintings on view in the xhibition. The curators of Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective are Gary Tinterow, Matthew Gale, Head of Displays, Tate Modern, and Chris Stephens, Head of Displays, Tate Britain. The presentation of the exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum is organized by Gary Tinterow and Anne L. Strauss, Associate Curator, assisted by Ian Alteveer, Research Associate, all in the Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art

Harrison, David Mellor, Simon Ofield, Rachel Tant, Gary Tinterow, and Victoria Walsh. The catalogue is published by Tate Publishing and will be available in the Museum’s book shops ($60 cloth, $40 paperback).

The Metropolitan Museum will offer an array of education programs in conjunction with Francis Bacon, including a symposium on Thursday, May 21; galle talks; and (on request) verbal imaging tours for people with visual impairments. In addition, the Museum will present the following documentary films: Francis Bacon and the Brutality of Fact (1985), directed by Michael Blackwood; Bacon’s Arena: An Art of Pain and Beauty

(2005), directed by Adam Low; and Francis Bacon (1985), directed by David Hinton. An audio tour, part of the Museum’s Audio Guide Program, will be available for rental ($7, $6 for members, $5 for children under 12).

The Audio Guide program is sponsored by Bloomberg. The exhibition also will be featured on the Museum’s website at www.metmuseum.org. Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective was exhibited at Tate Britain and is currently on view at the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid (through April 19, 2009) before its presentation at the Metropolitan Museum (May 20–August 16, 2009). # # #

For more Information (212) 535-7710; www.metmuseum.org