In many ways Francis Bacon’s raw images of abject bodily distortions answer the Surrealist Andre Breton’s call for a “convulsive beauty”. The figures that populate his paintings express not only the collective cultural anxieties of post-war Europe, but also his intimate emotional struggles.  

Bacon was born in 1909 in Ireland to middle class English parents. At age 16, he was allegedly discovered by his horrified father dressed in his mother’s underwear, a traumatic event that remained with him for the rest of his life. Before settling in London in 1926 with no formal art training, Bacon travelled to Berlin, and later visited Paris. Here, he became interested in Picasso’s biomorphic renderings of human form, which inspired his understanding of the human body as a permeable, malleable matter. His work ‘Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion’ (1944) shows part-human, part-animal figures in agonised contortions, with grotesque details like open, toothy mouths and pithy, angular ribs.  

Bacon was drawn to popular culture and collected shocking news and documentary images. He obsessively watched Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 film ‘Battleship Potëmkin’, his fascination with the close-up footage of the nurse covered in blood and silently crying out eventually inspiring his screaming figures. In ‘Study After Velázquez’ (1950), based on Diego Velázquez’s ‘Portrait of Innocent X’ (1650), the pope screams out while he clenches the arms of his throne. Bacon’s conflating of popular imagery and traditional art is what makes his figures so human and intensely vulnerable.

From the 1940s Bacon started isolating his figures in nightmarish, cage-like boxes and circular metal rails. As they seal the figure into their own world, these ‘spaceframes’ resonate Friedrich Nietzsche’s description of the “wretched glass capsule of the human individual”. 

By the late 1950s his reputation was international, later elevating it in 1962 with his influential ‘Three Studies for a Crucifixion’. He was also becoming known for his radical portraits of his friends, surrounding them with only a few elements like a bed or a rug or isolating their busts against a solid background. The clarity of the background plays against the treatment of the figure, which violently decomposes the sitter’s identity in painterly brushstrokes. ‘In Memory of George Dyer’ (1971) immortalises the memory of Bacon’s former lover who’d committed suicide, depicting Dyer multiple times in a frenetic attempt to make his presence real.

Bacon produced enigmatic, theoretical landscapes along the way, but never abandoned his explorations of the human body. He progressively reduced it to parts and even residues, employing new techniques to expand the communicative potential of his images. For example, he experimented with spray paint, which produces a tactile, granular surface suggestive of physical traumas such as bruises or cuts. He also sullied his images by adding sand and dust onto his canvas or sometimes a final spurt of white paint to suggest bodily fluids. However, Bacon liked this scatological texture sealed, preferring his canvas framed behind glass. HENI’s Giclée prints, with their glass-like surfaces, perform a similar function of encapsulating Bacon’s cathartic expression. 

Bacon said he strove to represent “the brutality of fact”, which is reflected in the pulsating energy of his grotesque forms which contain life and death. As his figures scream out, teeter on edge of a metal rail, or are contained in a cage, they reverberate the pain and alienation of modern experience. 

Francis Bacon

In many ways Francis Bacon’s raw images of abject bodily distortions answer the Surrealist Andre Breton’s call for a ‘convulsive beauty’. The figures that populate his paintings express not only the collective cultural anxieties of post-war Europe, but also his intimate emotional struggles.  

In 1963 Francis Bacon first met George Dyer, the East Londoner who would become his lover and one of his favourite subjects. In the following decades Bacon painted his likeness with a fervour that bordered on obsession, from small busts to full body, monumental triptychs. Among the most unique of these paintings is ‘Portrait of George Dyer Riding a Bicycle’, produced in 1966 and translated in 2015 into the present series of editioned prints. 

‘Portrait of George Dyer Riding a Bicycle’ is part of a series of ten paintings in which Bacon explored his despair at life’s pointless cycle of birth, copulation and death. These works simultaneously convey his frustrations with the deficiencies he saw in his partner. In this portrait, Dyer’s distorted features seem to dissolve within the flat background, rendered in a grim colour palette of dull shades of brown. Bacon represented Dyer as a broad shadow, which seems to assume the formless shape of a ghostlike mass of flesh. Bacon’s features emerge from his silhouetted head, almost combining two figurations in one. 

The circular form and motion of the bicycle wheels, significantly doubled, symbolise the endless circularity, transience and futility that Bacon associated with life. These concepts are echoed in the rail structure encasing Dyer, a visual device used to isolate and alienate figures. Despite Bacon’s attempt to fuse himself with the man he loved, he could never get close enough.  


Portrait of George Dyer Riding a Bicycle (Large)

In 1963 Francis Bacon first met George Dyer, the East Londoner who would become his lover and one of his favourite subjects. In the following decades Bacon painted his likeness with a fervour that bordered on obsession, from small busts to full body, monumental triptychs. Among the most unique of these paintings is ‘Portrait of George Dyer Riding a Bicycle’, produced in 1966 and translated in 2015 into the present series of editioned prints. 


In 1963 Francis Bacon first met George Dyer, the East Londoner who would become his lover and one of his favourite subjects. In the following decades Bacon painted his likeness with a fervour that bordered on obsession, from small busts to full body, monumental triptychs. Among the most unique of these paintings is ‘Portrait of George Dyer Riding a Bicycle’, produced in 1966 and translated in 2015 into the present series of editioned prints. 

‘Portrait of George Dyer Riding a Bicycle’ is part of a series of ten paintings in which Bacon explored his despair at life’s pointless cycle of birth, copulation and death. These works simultaneously convey his frustrations with the deficiencies he saw in his partner. In this portrait, Dyer’s distorted features seem to dissolve within the flat background, rendered in a grim colour palette of dull shades of brown. Bacon represented Dyer as a broad shadow, which seems to assume the formless shape of a ghostlike mass of flesh. Bacon’s features emerge from his silhouetted head, almost combining two figurations in one. 

The circular form and motion of the bicycle wheels, significantly doubled, symbolise the endless circularity, transience and futility that Bacon associated with life. These concepts are echoed in the rail structure encasing Dyer, a visual device used to isolate and alienate figures. Despite Bacon’s attempt to fuse himself with the man he loved, he could never get close enough.  

Portrait of George Dyer Riding a Bicycle (Small)

‘Lying Figure’ was painted by Francis Bacon in 1969 and turned into a series of prints in 2015. Its subject is an anonymous nude figure, based on photographs of his friend Henrietta Moraes taken by John Deakin. This work is the third and final variant of ‘Lying Figure with Hypodermic Syringe’ (1963) the first to inaugurate the format of an inverted body lying on a bed. 

The figure’s face is characteristically blurred, seemingly exploding into a shapeless mass of flesh. Supine on a round bed, she is alone in a bare room, its dull brown floor contrasting starkly with the pastel shade of the walls. The curved background contributes to the sense of dream-like unease and isolation. These formal elements emphasise her loneliness and vulnerability, exacerbated by the detail of the syringe inserted in her arm, prescient of Moraes’ later heroin addiction. The constant presence of death is suggested by the black shadows extending from her body. Two ceiling lightbulbs stand over the body, directing viewers to inspect her nakedness and adding an element of banality, a central element in Bacon’s vocabulary.

Although it was based on real-life people and events, Bacon’s ‘Lying Figure’ represents a timeless image of raw human experience, conveying the desolation of the human condition. Avoiding symbolism and narrative, the artist accentuated the confrontational nature of this simplified yet powerful naked figure.

Lying Figure (Large)

‘Lying Figure’ was painted by Francis Bacon in 1969 and turned into a series of prints in 2015. Its subject is an anonymous nude figure, based on photographs of his friend Henrietta Moraes taken by John Deakin. This work is the third and final variant of ‘Lying Figure with Hypodermic Syringe’ (1963) the first to inaugurate the format of an inverted body lying on a bed. 

Lying Figure (Small)

‘Study for Head of Lucian Freud’, produced by Francis Bacon in 1967, recreates the likeness of the famed portraitist through Bacon’s trademark blurred brushwork and sombre colour palette. In 2015, the bust was edited into a series of prints by HENI in collaboration with the Estate of Francis Bacon.

While Bacon was over a decade older than Freud, upon their meeting in the mid-1940s they initiated a lively friendship based on similar artistic conceptual interests. In this painting, Freud’s features are distorted beyond any recognition, occupying most of the canvas. His head, transformed into a mass of broad rough brushstrokes, contrasts starkly with the black flat background, a void that seemingly swallows the whole figuration. If Freud’s portraiture was celebrated for the artist’s ability to perceive and reproduce his sitters’ innermost psychology through their bodily features, in this work Bacon rejects pictorial representation altogether. Freud’s face, rather than being a site of social signification, is transformed into a gaping hole, absorbing vision and identity. 

Bacon’s rendition of Freud, suspended into a featureless void, is isolated from any narrative context. Freed from the constraints of naturalism, this image embodies an archetypal emotional expression, conveyed through anatomical distortions and suggestive colours.  

Study for Head of Lucian Freud

‘Study for Head of Lucian Freud’, produced by Francis Bacon in 1967, recreates the likeness of the famed portraitist through Bacon’s trademark blurred brushwork and sombre colour palette. In 2015, the bust was edited into a series of prints by HENI in collaboration with the Estate of Francis Bacon.

‘Study of a Nude’, a painting of an anonymous nude figure standing within a transparent cubic structure, was produced in 1952-53 by Francis Bacon and edited into a series of prints by HENI in 2015.

This full-body work represents a rare exception, at a time when the artist was mostly painting portrait heads in small format. The figuration was broadly derived by the 19th century photographs of Eadweard Muybridge, who produced series of images of animals and humans in motion to demonstrate the kinetic potentials of photography. In particular, ‘Study of a Nude’ is a close transposition of a single frame from Muybridge's 24-image sequence 'Athlete. Standing High Jump'. Similarities emerge in the painting’s reduced colour palette, limited to shades of grey, and the dynamic appearance of the naked body, seemingly revolving around its centre or perhaps getting ready to jump or dive.

Bacon’s trademark ‘spaceframes’, abstract lines surrounding the painting’s subject like cages or transparent architectural structures, generate a sense of bodily discomfort and isolation. They emphasise the conceptual elements of utter loneliness and spiritual desolation that are key to Bacon’s philosophy. The vulnerable position of the artwork’s subject, caged, exposed and deprived of identity, points to the countless psychological traumas of modern life. 

Study of a Nude

‘Study of a Nude’, a painting of an anonymous nude figure standing within a transparent cubic structure, was produced in 1952-53 by Francis Bacon and edited into a series of prints by HENI in 2015.

Francis Bacon’s ‘Figures in a Landscape’ is an enigmatic painting in which crouching nude figures are encircled by a transparent structure. This previously undocumented work is believed to have been produced around 1956 and edited into a series of prints by HENI in 2015.

Over a vast empty space composed of rough dark brushstrokes are two squatting, faceless bodies. Their transparent skin, faintly visible against the deep blue background, seems to loosely wrap around shapeless mounds of flesh, exuding a sense of loneliness and desperation. Appearing to hug each other, their touch remains without warmth or feeling.  

The abstract yellow lines, rather than resembling Bacon’s trademark architectural structures, recall instead the golden ‘papal’ thrones that appear in the artist’s series of paintings based on Diego Velázquez’s ‘Portrait of Innocent X’ (1650). ‘Figures in a Landscape’ is, therefore, a transitional work, which remains mysterious in both the circumstances of its production and inspiration.

Figures in a Landscape

Francis Bacon’s ‘Figures in a Landscape’ is an enigmatic painting in which crouching nude figures are encircled by a transparent structure. This previously undocumented work is believed to have been produced around 1956 and edited into a series of prints by HENI in 2015.

Francis Bacon’s triptych ‘In Memory of George Dyer’ (1971) was painted shortly after his lover’s death in Paris two days before the opening of his retrospective at the Grand Palais. The first of many posthumous canvases Bacon painted of Dyer, this work was edited into a series of prints by HENI in 2016.

Over three pastel pink panels, Bacon extruded his feelings of dejection and guilt over the death of his lover. Their romantic and artistic partnership emerged, in the left panel, in a fleshy embrace which also refers to an image from Graeme Kent’s 'A Pictorial History of Wrestling' (1968). The deconstructed architectural setting of the central panel was based on a stairway in the Paris hotel in which Dyer died. The twisting of the naked arm to turn the key, additionally, is a gesture that nods both to Picasso’s surrealist figures of the 1920s and to the Thunder God's imperative T.S. Eliot's 'The Waste Land' (1922). The right panel presents Dyer both as artistic subject and as dead body, each mirroring the other in a guilt-ridden representation. 

This triptych constitutes Bacon’s attempt to cope with love and loss and testifies his continued struggle with shame and remorse. ‘In Memory of George Dyer’ deals with the consequences of trauma and pain, and with the inescapable tragedy of death. 

In Memory of George Dyer (Large)

Francis Bacon’s triptych ‘In Memory of George Dyer’ (1971) was painted shortly after his lover’s death in Paris two days before the opening of his retrospective at the Grand Palais. The first of many posthumous canvases Bacon painted of Dyer, this work was edited into a series of prints by HENI in 2016.


Francis Bacon’s triptych ‘In Memory of George Dyer’ (1971) was painted shortly after his lover’s death in Paris two days before the opening of his retrospective at the Grand Palais. The first of many posthumous canvases Bacon painted of Dyer, this work was edited into a series of prints by HENI in 2015.

Over three pastel pink panels, Bacon extruded his feelings of dejection and guilt over the death of his lover. Their romantic and artistic partnership emerged, in the left panel, in a fleshy embrace which also refers to an image from Graeme Kent’s 'A Pictorial History of Wrestling' (1968). The deconstructed architectural setting of the central panel was based on a stairway in the Paris hotel in which Dyer died. The twisting of the naked arm to turn the key, additionally, is a gesture that nods both to Picasso’s surrealist figures of the 1920s and to the Thunder God's imperative T.S. Eliot's 'The Waste Land' (1922). The right panel presents Dyer both as artistic subject and as dead body, each mirroring the other in a guilt-ridden representation. 

This triptych constitutes Bacon’s attempt to cope with love and loss and testifies his continued struggle with shame and remorse. ‘In Memory of George Dyer’ deals with the consequences of trauma and pain, and with the inescapable tragedy of death. 

In Memory of George Dyer (Small)

Francis Bacon’s triptych ‘In Memory of George Dyer’ (1971) was painted shortly after his lover’s death in Paris two days before the opening of his retrospective at the Grand Palais. The first of many posthumous canvases Bacon painted of Dyer, this work was edited into a series of prints by HENI in 2015.

Francis Bacon’s painting ‘Study after Velázquez’ (1950), edited into a series of prints by HENI in 2016, is part of his series of works based on Diego Velázquez’s ‘Portrait of Pope Innocent X’ (1650). While these paintings have become synonymous with the artist’s practice and his conflicted relationships with authority figures, their suggestive potentials remain enigmatic. 

For decades, Bacon obsessed over Velázquez’ masterpiece, studying it through photographs but always refusing to see in real life for fear of turning his efforts into lifeless imitations. In this painting, Bacon eliminated the purple cape and biretta (the square ceremonial hat sometimes worn by Catholic clergy), and the Pope remains fluid and transformational, appearing to be morphing into a secular, businessman-like figure. His mouth opens in an endless scream, famously inspired by a scene in Sergei Eisenstein’s ‘Battleship Potemkin’ (1925). The striped background, evocative of curtains, and the rail in the foreground produce a sense of oppressive claustrophobia. 

If Velázquez’s original portrait conveys power and self-assurance, Bacon’s version subverts these themes. The primal scream of the figure, suspended into a featureless void, is isolated from any narrative context and conveys a kind of perpetual existential despair. Freed from the constraints of portraiture, this image embodies a kind of archetypal emotional expression, represented through anatomical distortions and sombre colours.  

Study after Velazquez (Large)

Francis Bacon’s painting ‘Study after Velázquez’ (1950), edited into a series of prints by HENI in 2016, is part of his series of works based on Diego Velázquez’s ‘Portrait of Pope Innocent X’ (1650). While these paintings have become synonymous with the artist’s practice and his conflicted relationships with authority figures, their suggestive potentials remain enigmatic. 

Study after Velazquez (Small)

Francis Bacon’s ‘Marching Figures’ (1952) is an enigmatic painting that has consistently resisted scholarly interpretations. In its lower section, a crowd of simplified human figures, represented with quick black and white brushstrokes, marches underneath a transparent cubic structure. On top of the spaceframe is a faceless, half-formed being, perhaps a polar bear or a monkey, surrounded by thick black and blue lines. 

The marching soldiers, animated by flickering lines, were possibly derived by the illustrations of Egyptian soldiers in Amédée Ozenfant’s classic manual ‘Foundations of Modern Art’, first published in 1931. 

The interpretation of the ambiguous entity placed on the cubic structure as a polar bear has led critics to take it as a metaphor for the Cold War and the Suez Crisis, although Russian bears are brown. It may, then, simply refer to Yeats’ “rough beast”, slouching towards oblivion, from his poem ‘The Second Coming’ (1919). This work uses Christian imagery regarding the Apocalypse and Second Coming to allegorically describe the atmosphere of post-war Europe, a theme that was particularly relevant in Bacon’s practice.

Despite its unclear, cryptic figurations, ‘Marching Figures’ remains a captivating testament to Bacon’s ability to conflate visual inventions and psychological traumas of modern history.

Marching Figures (Large)

Francis Bacon’s ‘Marching Figures’ (1952) is an enigmatic painting that has consistently resisted scholarly interpretations. In its lower section, a crowd of simplified human figures, represented with quick black and white brushstrokes, marches underneath a transparent cubic structure. On top of the spaceframe is a faceless, half-formed being, perhaps a polar bear or a monkey, surrounded by thick black and blue lines. 

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