Correspondence and Official Documents

The MB Art Collection archives contain the largest and most varied collection of Francis Bacon-related correspondence and official documents in existence. It includes letters, postcards, telegrams and brief handwritten notes between the painter and his circle of friends, his partners, his family and his various connections as well as writers, gallery managers and exhibition curators. These writings shine a spotlight on Bacon’s private life, with his frailties and doubts, and yield fascinating details about his relationships with the people he was closest to, artworks in the making and his travels. They make up a kind of diary, affording glimpses of the artist’s day-to-day life. The corpus is completed by a substantial collection of official documents.