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Portrait of George Dyer Staring at Blind Cord, 1966

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

44.7 x 36.4 cm (framed)

unknown edition size

From a suite of five lithographs, produced to accompany Bacon’s exhibition of seventeen paintings at Galerie Maeght in Paris in 1966. Bacon’s relationship with George Dyer was full of conflict, filled with love, tainted with alcohol, and painfully dysfunctional. The young man was a living paradox: at the same time, a petty criminal associated with an East End gang, and a vulnerable desire to recognize and support alcoholism. Though he was the inspiration behind some of Bacon’s most powerful pieces, he was also the overwhelming obstacle for their completion.

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.