"English painter of Irish birth. Francis Bacon came to London in 1925 and although he received no formal art training, he created a sensation in 1945 when he exhibited his Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (London, Tate Gallery) at the Lefevre Gallery in London. His work was Expressionist in style, and his distorted human forms were unsettling. He developed his personal style and gloomy subject matter during the 1950s, when he achieved an international reputation. Aside from his unpleasant images of corrupt and disgusting humanity, Bacon deliberately subverted artistic conventions by using the triptych format of Renaissance altarpieces to show the evils of man, rather than the virtues of Christ."
- The Bullfinch Guide to Art History
"Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion is a 1944 triptych painted by Francis Bacon. The work is based on the Eumenides—or Furies—of Aeschylus' The Oresteia, and depicts three writhing anthropomorphic creatures set against a flat burnt orange background. Three Studies was executed in oil paint and pastel on Sundeala fibre board and completed within the space of two weeks."
John Russell has observed that the immediate post-war period in British history was marked by an atmosphere of nostalgia and optimism—a sense that "everything was going to be alright..."
Russell describes being shocked by "images so unrelievedly awful that the mind shut with a snap at the sight of them. Their anatomy was half-human, half-animal, and they were confined in a low-ceilinged, windowless and oddly proportioned space. They could bite, probe, and suck, and they had very long eel-like necks, but their functioning in other respects was mysterious. Ears and mouths they had, but two at least of them were sightless."":)
Bacon painted these post-war. It lent to the nostalgia of the times and the progressiveness of art. Surrealism was what really attracted me to staring at the room of Bacon. I love surrealism and Bacon bits (pun intended) made me quite happy.
Touching Bacon
I just thought that Oil on three wooden panels was pretty cool.
