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4/11/2002

Francis Bacon

Marlborough Gallery, New York

The Directors of Marlborough Gallery are pleased to announce the opening on November 4th of an exhibition of important paintings by the renowned English artist, Francis Bacon. This will be the first show of Bacons work at Marlborough since 1993. Marlborough Gallery represented Bacon for most of his career up until his death in April 1992. With the exception of one early work all the works shown in this exhibition are signed by the artist, and several have been exhibited at different times at museums around the world such as the Grand Palais, Paris; Tate Gallery, London; Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul; Yale Center for British Art, New Haven; The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.

Marlboroughs show will consist of nine works as follows: three quintessential triptychs dating from 1970, 1983 and 1986-87, each panel measuring 78 x 58 inches; a rare 1957 painting of a pope, measuring 60 x 46 1/2 inches; Study for Self Portrait, 1981, measuring 78 x 58 inches; two other single panel works of the same size dating from 1988 (Jet of Water) and 1990 (Male Nude Before Mirror) as well as two outstanding small works, 14 x 12 inches, from 1967 and 1982 of Isabel Rawsthorne.

One cannot overestimate the importance of Bacons oeuvre. He is very probably the single most important artist England produced in the twentieth century and, arguably, along with Turner and Constable, the most significant painter to emerge in that countrys artistic history. He would also be counted on most everyones short list of leading artists of the twentieth century. One could simply say that Bacon had a highly original mind and that as an artist he was a genius. No other artist of his time produced works of such visceral impact combined with what The New York Times called delirious beauty. If the subjects of his work offer enigmatic glimpses like lurid images from barely remembered dreams or nightmares (Ken Johnson), it is his stature as an inventive and unrivalled painter which assures Bacons high elevation and which will endure through the ages. In an interview with his friend, the art critic, David Sylvester, Bacon once talked about Van Gogh and what he (Bacon) wanted to get in his work. He said, Van Gogh is one of my greatest heroes because I think that he was able to be almost literal, and yet, by the way he put on the paint give you a marvelous vision of the reality of things. I saw it very clearly when I was once in Provence...one just saw in this absolutely barren country that by the way he put on the paint he was able to give it such an amazing living quality...The living quality is what you have to get. That living quality could fairly sum up what makes any painting a great work of art, and one might add that the more living it is, the greater it is. What Marlboroughs show demonstrates clearly is that Bacons primary insistence was to a large degree based on the use of paint as the essential subject and that in his best works he got that living quality time and time again.

Born in Dublin of English parents in 1909, Bacon traveled to Berlin and Paris before settling in London in 1929. After a brief career as a furniture designer, he took up painting. Although never trained as a painter, his work began to receive wide attention after World War II when he exhibited his Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion in 1945. Over his long career his works drew from sources as disparate as Velasquez, Muybridge, newspaper and magazine photos, and film stills. An illustrated color catalog of the Bacon show will be available at the time of the exhibition.

hours: Mon - Sat., 10am - 5:30pm

Marlborough
40 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019
Tel: 212 541 4900; Fax: 212 541 4948

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