Francis Bacon and the Tradition of Art

This exhibition catalogue is not a retrospective but rather an examination for the first time of the artist’s work within a network of relationships and influences from the Old Masters to the artists of the twentieth century.
The eminent English painter Francis Bacon (19091992) is known for his brutal, haunting and grotesque portraits of man and beast. In this eyeopening study Bacon stands besides artists like Velazquez, Rembrandt, Titian, Ingres, Degas, Schiele, and Van Gogh – his real sources. To support this thesis, the text draws connections between Bacon and his predecessors according to Bacon’s papal portraits, the Motif of the Scream, Bacon and Surrealism, Mirrors and Reflections, the Cage Motif. This sumptuously illustrated book offers a firsttime study of a modernist’s work in relation to the masterpieces of art history.
Exhibition Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna October 15, 2003 – January 18, 2004
Fondation Beyeler, Basel, February 8, 2004 – June 20, 2004

This exhibition catalogue is not a retrospective but rather an examination for the first time of the artist’s work within a network of relationships and influences from the Old Masters to the artists of the twentieth century.
The eminent English painter Francis Bacon (19091992) is known for his brutal, haunting and grotesque portraits of man and beast. In this eyeopening study Bacon stands besides artists like Velazquez, Rembrandt, Titian, Ingres, Degas, Schiele, and Van Gogh – his real sources. To support this thesis, the text draws connections between Bacon and his predecessors according to Bacon’s papal portraits, the Motif of the Scream, Bacon and Surrealism, Mirrors and Reflections, the Cage Motif. This sumptuously illustrated book offers a firsttime study of a modernist’s work in relation to the masterpieces of art history.
Exhibition Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna October 15, 2003 – January 18, 2004
Fondation Beyeler, Basel, February 8, 2004 – June 20, 2004