Venue: Royal Academy of Arts
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Francis Bacon was one of the most important painters of the 20th century: a raw, bold, controversial artist who was an openly gay man at a time when homosexuality was illegal in the UK.
This major new exhibition, Francis Bacon: Man and Beast at the Royal Academy, focuses on Bacon’s life-long fascination with animals: how this shaped – and distorted – his approach to painting the human body; and how his figures are sometimes barely recognisable as either human or beast.
It also promises to explore how Bacon was fascinated by animal’s movements, observing them in the wild in South Africa, and his attempts to understand the true nature of humans by watching the uninhibited behaviour of animals.
The exhibition spans 50 years of his work, from some of Bacon’s earliest works and his last-ever painting.
Main image: Francis Bacon, Study for Bullfight No. 1, 1969. © The Estate of Francis Bacon. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd
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