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Our institution financially supports the latest book by Yves Peyré: Francis Bacon ou la mesure de l’excès, published by Gallimard on the occasion of the major exhibition ‘Francis Bacon: Books and Painting’, presented at the Centre Pompidou in Paris till 20 January 2020.

Yves Peyré, writer and friend of Francis Bacon, has produced a notably complete study of the artist’s work and life, both in terms of analysis and reproduction of paintings and drawings. He evokes the major contribution of this great unclassifiable painter, from his beginnings as a young designer in the 1920s to his last large triptychs of the late 1980s, and offers a personal and touching look at his complex personality and his extraordinary oeuvre: tormented, sometimes violent, reflecting his most intimate wounds, but nevertheless luminous in its colours and through his quest for the absolute.

This account, always based on precise facts, considerably broadens our vision of the work through in-depth interpretations, making a distinctively new contribution to what has been written already. The book is based on a flawless knowledge of the artist’s work and is enriched by the author’s close relationship with Francis Bacon, offering a philosophical, poetic and artistic stroll through the various stages of an outstanding exploration.

Available online here.

The Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation is taking part in the 24^thJournée Européenne du Patrimoine (Local Heritage Day) to be held in Monaco on Sunday 29 September 2019.

Our institution will offer free guided tours to its visitors, by appointment only, at:

• 11:00
• 14:00
• 15:30

To book your visit, please contact the Foundation: +377 93 30 30 33 (deadline for booking is Friday 27 September).

More details on the “24^th Journée Européenne du Patrimoine” here

The Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation is taking part in the exhibition ’Francis Bacon: Books and Painting’ – to be presented from 11 September 2019 to 20 January 2020 at the Centre Pompidou in Paris – by contributing to the exhibition catalogue and the series of lectures, the ‘Bacon Book Club’ to be held at the Centre Pompidou during the exhibition period.

The last major French exhibition dedicated to the ardently Francophile Bacon was held in 1996 at the Centre Pompidou. More than twenty years later, ‘Francis Bacon: Books and Painting’ presents paintings executed from 1971, the year of the legendary retrospective held at the Grand Palais, to his final works in 1992. Didier Ottinger is the curator of this innovative exploration of the influence of literature in Francis Bacon’s œuvre. 

There are six rooms along the visitor route, placing literature at the heart of the exhibition. The event includes readings of excerpts of texts taken from Francis Bacon’s library.  The exhibition at the Centre Pompidou focuses on works produced by Bacon in the last two decades of his career. It consists of sixty paintings (including twelve triptychs, in addition to a series of portraits and self-portraits) from major private and public collections. From 1971 to 1992 (the year of the artist’s death), his painting style was marked by its simplification and intensification. His colours acquired new depth, drawn from a unique chromatic register of yellow, pink and saturated orange.

1971 was a turning point for Bacon. His Grand Palais retrospective earned him international acclaim, while the tragic death of his partner, two days before the exhibition opening, gave way to a period marked by guilt and represented by a proliferation of the symbolic and mythological form of the Erinyes (the Furies of Greek mythology) in his work. The ‘Black’ Triptychs painted in memory of his deceased friend (In Memory of George Dyer, 1971, Triptych–August 1972 and Triptych, May–June 1973), all presented at the exhibition, commemorate this loss. 

More information on the exhibition here

More information on the ‘Bacon Book Club’ here

Francis Bacon, Triptych August 1972

The final show of the creative lab Vers Abraxa will be presented at 109, in Nice, on Saturday 15 June from 3 to 5pm. It takes place within the scope of the event “Éclairage Public#3”, organised by the city of Nice, and with the participation of the students of the Villa Arson printmaking studio, who have created the artist’s book Bacon, de face, de profil, tout contre, in collaboration with our Foundation.

This project was initiated after several visits by the Villa Arson students to our institution and focuses on space, figures (and their inclusion in the public space), blurring, chance and gambling, a series of themes present in Bacon’s oeuvre. 

The public is invited to see 13 performances to get immersed in a student-created universe, by turns utopian and dystopian.

The Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation is pleased to support the book Bacon and the Mind: Art, Neuroscience and Psychology. This title is the first in the ‘Francis Bacon Studies’ series launched by The Estate of Francis Bacon with the financial support of our institution.

The series aims to disseminate writing that reflects original research and opens new perspectives on Bacon’s art and life. Martin Harrison, editor of Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonné, is the series editor.

This volume includes contributions from Christopher Bucklow, Steven Jaron, Darian Leader, John Onians, Semir Zeki and Tomohiro Ishizu. Bacon and the Mind is being published by The Estate of Francis Bacon Publishing in association with Thames & Hudson.

Available to order online

To celebrate the fourth anniversary of its opening, on 28^th October, our Foundation presents a new hang.

Visitors to the Foundation can now discover around a hundred items dedicated to the British painter: paintings, graphic works, photographs, objects found in his various studios, letters and working documents.

This re-hang also includes works by artists who knew Bacon or were influenced by his oeuvre. One room is entirely dedicated to his Parisian studio, where he worked for more than a decade.

Free guided tours take place every Tuesday and on the first Saturday of each month, by appointment only.

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Our Foundation financially supports Perrine Le Querrec’s last book Bacon le Cannibale, published by Hippocampe Editions in mid-October.

Using sources in the archives of the MB Art Collection (paintings, graphic works, letters, objects, photographs, and working documents, all from Bacon’s studios), the book constructs a poetic and sensitive portrait of the man and his work. From reluctant words and stubborn silence Perrine Le Querrec creates language and vision. The study and manipulation of archives and images occupy an essential place in her writing.

“To the question “Which writer has influenced you?” I would answer, without hesitation: Francis Bacon. If not a writer, he has always been an essential source of inspiration and guidance. I would never write “stories”, I would seek to compose a language that addresses the body, sensations and nervous system, a language as living and incarnate as possible. Archives are a source of memory, emotion and poetry which hold a fundamental place in the construction of my writing. Thus, in tribute to Francis Bacon, a painter who used archives and photographs, working with images in all their longevity and decay, their surface and depth, I turned to his own archives, his portraits, and his objects. These archives, conserved by a lover of Bacon’s work, have given substance to my passion. Keenly shadowing him, tracing the pattern of his actions and materials, I attempt a Study for a portrait of the artist. Through archive and poetry, I am as close as possible to a flamboyant, heart-breaking, lonely, universal creation.”
Perrine Le Querrec

For more information on this book: http://www.hippocampe-editions.fr/actualites/528-bacon-la-cannibale-de-perrine-le-querrec-archives-poesie-peinture-fondation-monaco.html

The Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation is taking part in the 23rd Journée Européenne du Patrimoine (Local Heritage Day) to be held in Monaco on Sunday 23 September 2018. Our institution will offer free guided tours to its visitors, by appointment only, as follows:

• Sunday 23/9/18 at 11:00
• Sunday 23/9/18 at 14:00
• Sunday 23/9/18 at 15:30

To book your visit, please contact the Foundation: +377 93 30 30 33 (deadline for booking is Thursday 22 September).

More details on the “23rd Journée Européenne du Patrimoine” here

The Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation takes part in this exhibition alongside the Musée National d’Art moderne in Paris, the Villa Arson in Nice, the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul de Vence and the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris.

On this occasion our institution is lending Bacon’s first known work entitled ‘Watercolour’ (1929) and a rare rug designed by the British artist and dating from his short career as an interior and furniture designer at the turn of the 1930s.

For more information on the exhibition:
http://en.musees-nationaux-alpesmaritimes.fr/fleger/event/l-face-face-fernand-leger-and-his-friends

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The Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation is taking part in the “Bacon – Giacometti” exhibition held at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel from 29 April to 2 September 2018. The exhibition is organised by the Fondation Beyeler in cooperation with the Fondation Giacometti, Paris

This ambitious exhibition is the first to study in depth the parallel artistic careers of two of the 20th century’s most influential artists: Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966) and Francis Bacon (1909–1992).
The curators Catherine Grenier, director of the Fondation Giacometti in Paris, Michael Peppiatt, Bacon expert and a personal friend of the artist, and Ulf Küster, curator at the Fondation Beyeler, uncover remarkable parallels in this exhibition of circa 100 works, shedding light on these two artists who struck up a friendship through their mutual friend Isabel Rawsthorne.

On this occasion our institution is lending several photographs from its collection. Some of these were taken by renowned photographers including Mario Dondero or Edward Quinn, while others are more intimate pictures.

For more information on
the exhibition: www.fondationbeyeler.ch/en/