Irish-born english painter. (1909-1992) Expressionist in style, and although
lacking formal training, has an elegant brush-stroke which give dark, hazy appearance
to many of his pictures, namely the portraits. The features of these heads are
distorted, as seen through the glass of a bottle. Some details and highlights
sets out in the dark, perfectly places with a single dot of white or a light brush-stroke.
His pictures can have a surrealistic, gloomy, even grotesque character, as his
works based on
Velasquez' rennaisance portrait of pope Innocent X , where he transforms the
sullen, powerful pope to a screaming mask of terror .
The flesh, human or animal, give his pictures a raw power, either the torn,
open carcass of the picture simply called Painting ,
or the distortion of the self-portait from 1976.
Here is another, large self-portrait from 1972.As Bacon don't hesitate wrecking his own face in the portraits, nor is he mercyful with the faces of others, as
in this depicting Richard Chopping.
