Francs Bacon
"You can't be more horrific than life itself." - Bacon

Of Irish birth. No formal art training. Thrown out by his farther for his sexuality. Francis Bacon went to London in 1925. Created a sensation in 1945 when he exhibited his Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion in London. His work was Expressionist in style, and his distorted human forms were unsettling. Bacon often found inspiration in the work of other artists. He subverted artistic conventions by using the triptych format of Renaissance altarpieces to show the evils of man, rather than the virtues of Christ.

"...I, I must confess, was so shocked and disturbed by the surrealism of Francis Bacon that I was glad to escape from this exhibition, which I had anyway entered prematurely, unguided therefore by a catalogue. Perhaps it was the red [sic] background in three of the pictures that made me think of entrails, of an anatomy or a vivisection and feel squeamish, I don't know; but there it is". 'Perspex', Apollo Magazine 1945

"Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion" seems derived from Picasso's Crucifixion, but further distorted, with ostrich necks and button heads protruding from bags - the whole effect gloomily phallic, like Bosch without the humour. These objects are perches on stools, and depicted as if they were sculpture, as in the Picasso's of 1930. I have no doubt of Mr Bacon's uncommon gifts, but these pictures expressing his sense of the atrocious world into which we have survived seems to me symbols of outrage rather than works of art. If Peace redresses him, he may delight as he now dismays."