Animals captivated Bacon, and this exhibition at the Royal Academy (29 January–17 April) allows us to examine just how much his obsessive study of their movement informed his distortions of the human figure. The show follows the painter from South Africa, where he travelled to observe animals in the wild, to bullfights he saw in France and Spain, and into the privacy of his studio, which was filled with books about wildlife and where he would pore over Eadweard Muybridge’s photographs of humans and animals in motion. Find out more from the Royal Academy’s website – and for more on Bacon’s beasts, read Daisy Hildyard’s feature for Apollo here.
Preview below | View Apollo’s Art Diary here
Head VI (1949), Francis Bacon. Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd; © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2020
Portrait of George Dyer Crouching (1966), Francis Bacon. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd; © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2020
Man with Dog (1953), Francis Bacon. Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd; © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2020
Study for Bullfight No. 1 (1969), Francis Bacon. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd; © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2020
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