Francis Bacon

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.