Francis Bacon: Man and Beast

Irish-born artist Francis Bacon was the horse-breeder’s son who became one of the most important painters of the 20th century. An openly gay man at a time when homosexuality was illegal, he was banished from his conservative family home by his father at 16. After that, he drifted through Berlin and Paris before establishing himself in London, with his formative years running parallel with some of the 20th century’s most profoundly disturbing events.

This powerful, intense, dramatic exhibition will focus on Bacon’s unerring fascination with animals: how it both shaped his approach to the human body and distorted it; how, caught at the most extreme moments of existence, his figures are barely recognisable as either human or beast.

It also explores how Bacon was mesmerised by animal movement, observing animals in the wild during trips to South Africa; filling his studio with wildlife books, and constantly referring to Eadweard Muybridge’s 19th-century photographs of humans and animals in motion. Whether chimpanzees, bulls, dogs, or birds of prey, Bacon felt he could get closer to understanding the true nature of humankind by watching the uninhibited behaviour of animals.

Francis Bacon’s art is a physical experience. Room after room of Royal Academy’s largest main galleries are filled with his dark, disturbing yet dramatic paintings, populated by monstrous, contorted figures, human and animals - or a hybrid of both. Every figure in this exhibition is twisted and contorted, every face is screaming, every orifice is bleeding. It’s vulgar, and properly overpowering - it’s magnificent.

Bacon is one of the great masters of twentieth-century art, and this exhibition focuses on the influence of animal figures on his painting. It turns out that the brutality of the animal kingdom pulses through the veins of almost everything he did.

Francis Bacon “Man and Beast” opens on January 29 - get your tickets here