Furniture designed by Francis Bacon

In 1930 and 1931, Francis Bacon lived at 17 Queensberry Mews West, in the South Kensington area of London, where he set himself up as a designer of furniture and rugs. His designs were influenced by Bauhaus, mainly as a result of a brief stay in Berlin in 1927, and by his discovery at the end of the 1920s of the work of modernists such as Charlotte Perriand, André Lurçat, Eileen Gray, Marcel Breuer, Pierre Chareau, Robert Mallet-Stevens and Le Corbusier. His rugs also echoed the works of Fernand Léger, Jean Lurçat and Giorgio De Chirico. Bacon initially came to the attention of the public as a decorator. In August 1930, his work attracted notice in the art magazine The Studio. The geometrical shapes of some of his furniture designs also heralded significant elements that would later surface in his pictorial compositions. Fewer than fifteen items of furniture and rugs from Francis Bacon’s brief career as a designer have survived: the MB Art Collection includes the largest group of them held in a single collection.