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Portrait of George Dyer, 1966

Lithograph on paper
(framed with 3mm ArtGlass Lifetime Museum Acrylic)

44.4 x 36.4 cm (framed)

unknown edition size

This is a portrait of Bacon’s greatest love George Dyer, taken at the height of Bacon’s creative powers. Dyer is portrayed sitting in a swivel office chair in a brightly colored room. His body and face are twisted and his legs are crossed. His head appears to be framed by a window or door. Above is a bare pendant light, Bacon’s favorite motif. The work contains a series of spatial ambiguities, not least due to the fact that Dyer’s body appears to be placed both in the foreground and in the background.

Francis Bacon (After)

Francis Bacon (28 October 1909 – 28 April 1992) was an Irish-born British figurative painter known for his raw, unsettling imagery. Focusing on the human form, his subjects included crucifixions, portraits of popes, self-portraits, and portraits of close friends, with abstracted figures sometimes isolated in geometrical structures. Rejecting various classifications of his work, Bacon claimed that he strove to render "the brutality of fact." He built up a reputation as one of the giants of contemporary art with his unique style. Bacon said that he saw images "in series", and his work, which numbers c. 590 extant paintings along with many others he destroyed, typically focused on a single subject for sustained periods, often in triptych or diptych formats.