The national archives of the Centre Pompidou in Paris is to receive a large collection of works donated by a close friend of the British painter Francis Bacon. Barry Joule said he had chosen to the F…
According to his cousin and close friend Diana Watson, the mind of artist Francis Bacon seldom moved from the facts of love, death, massacre and madness . Now, decades on from Bacon s death in 1992, Pulitzer-prize winning critics Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan not only explore Bacon s preoccupation with those powerful themes in their authoritative and fascinating biography, but offer us a chronological and in-depth account of his background, life and times.
Like all great biographies, the figure centre stage is seen in the context of the zeitgeist. In this instance, family wealth, social mores, politics and sexuality colour, inform and determine Bacon s Irish upbringing, his time in Berlin, Paris and London and how he, with little or no formal education or training, turned from designer to artist.