FRANCIS BACON AND THE TRADITION OF ART

This exhibition catalogue is not a retrospective but rather an examination for the first time of the artist's work within a network of relationships and influences from the Old Masters to the artists of the twentieth century. The eminent English painter Francis Bacon (1909-1992) is known for his brutal, haunting and grotesque portraits of man and beast. In this eyeopening study Bacon stands besides artists like Velazquez, Rembrandt, Titian, Ingres, Degas, Schiele, and Van Gogh - his real sources. To support this thesis, the text draws connections between Bacon and his predecessors according to themes - Bacon's papal portraits, the Motif of the Scream, Bacon and Surrealism, Mirrors and Reflections, the Cage Motif. This sumptuously illustrated book offers a firsttime study of a modernist's work in relation to the masterpieces of art history.