Francis Bacon - Editions New York Tuesday, June 8, 2010 | Phillips

Create your first list.

Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.

  • Artist Biography

    Francis Bacon

    Irish-British • 1909 - 1992

    Francis Bacon was a larger-than-life figure during his lifetime and remains one now more than ever. Famous for keeping a messy studio, and even more so for his controversial, celebrated depictions of papal subjects and bullfights, often told in triptychs, Bacon signified the blinding dawn of the Modern era. His signature blurred portraits weren't murky enough to stave off his reputation as highly contentious—his paintings were provocations against social order in the people's eye. But, Bacon often said, "You can't be more horrific than life itself."
     
    In conversation with yet challenging the conventions of Modern art, Bacon was known for his triptychs brutalizing formalist truths, particularly Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, which Bacon debuted in London in 1944, and Three Studies of Lucian Freud, which became famous when it set the record for most expensive work of art at auction at the time it sold in 2013.

    View More Works

81

A Bullfight No. 1 (Study)

1971
Lithograph in colors, on wove paper, with margins,
I. 50 x 45 3/8 in. (127 x 115.3 cm);
S. 63 x 47 1/2 in. (160 x 120.7 cm)

signed in felt-tip pen (faded), numbered 133/150 in pencil, published by Centre National d'Art Contemporain, Paris, occasional soft handling creases, a few pale foxmarks, moisture staining in places in the upper margin and corners (slightly affecting the image area), otherwise in good condition, framed.

Estimate
$10,000 - 15,000 

Sold for $23,750

Editions

8 June 2010
New York