other artists

• Ana Mendieta
• Hiroshi Sugimoto
• Alexander Calder
• Willem de Kooning
• Jean Dubuffet
• Alberto Giacometti
• Henri Matisse
• Henry Moore
• Gerhard Richter
• Auguste Rodin
• Ed Ruscha
• David Smith
• Ellsworth Kelly
• Nikki Lee
• Man Ray
• John Baldessari
• Arshile Gorky

in depth: Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon (British, born Dublin, Ireland, 1909–1992) grew up in Dublin and London amidst the upheaval of World War I and the Irish Home Rule movement. After leaving home at 16, he spent the late 1920s in Berlin and Paris, where he worked as an interior designer. He decided to become an artist after seeing an impressive Paris exhibition of Pablo Picasso's works, and in 1929 he returned to London and began painting. Virtually self-taught, Bacon won early praise from influential critics during the 1930s. However, in about 1943, he destroyed most of his early paintings.
 
In 1944, Bacon completed his first major canvas, a triptych entitled Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (Tate Gallery, London). In this and ensuing works he fused horrific imagery with traditional religious or literary sources, depicting crucifixions, screaming popes, and tortured bodies as he transcribed the brutality and isolation of those pushed to the limits of endurance. In doing so, he expanded the figurative tradition of Western painting.

Fiercely independent, Bacon never allied himself with any school or movement—but over his fifty-year career he became one of the preeminent painters of the postwar era.