Publications

This book, the first to be dedicated to photographs of Francis Bacon, unveils iconic and often previously unseen images of the painter. The photographs are drawn from the MB Art Collection which holds the world’s most extensive collection of photographs of Francis Bacon. This collection encompasses over 700 hundred prints by more than seventy photographers, ranging from portraits by eminent photographers to rare snapshots caught by his inner circle.

Study for a Portrait offers a new glance at this singular artist. The portfolio, spanning from the 1920s to the 1990s, is accompanied by photographers’ anecdotes and memories of the shoots. This unique encounter through the camera lens opens revealing and personal perspectives on one of the most celebrated artists of the twentieth century.

Only 300 copies of this book are for sale (295€). To order a copy, please contact the Foundation. You can also find this publication at The Photographers’ Gallery bookshop in London and at the Centre Pompidou bookshop in Paris.

Martin Harrison, editor of Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonné, is the series editor.

Francis Bacon: Painting, Philosophy, Psychoanalysis draws together some of today’s leading philosophers and psychoanalytic critics to go beyond established readings of Bacon and open up radically new ways of thinking about his art. The essays bring Bacon into dialogue with figures such as Aristotle, Georg Hegel, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Theodor Adorno, and Martin Heidegger, and situate his work in the broader contexts of modernism and modernity.

More information on the book here.

The last major French exhibition dedicated to the ardently Francophile Bacon was held in 1996 at the Centre Pompidou. More than twenty years later, ‘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.

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 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: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bacon-Mind-Art-Neuroscience-Psychology/dp/0500970971/

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

It has also been revised to include recent research and discoveries which has enabled us to expand the biography section on the artist.

Not for sale, only available from the Foundation.

Jointly published by the Foundation and Albin Michel, it has been compiled under the direction of Martin Harrison, the exhibition’s curator and author of Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonné. Nine eminent art historians (Martin Harrison, Sarah Whitfield, Amanda J. Harrison, Catherine Howe, Dr. Rebecca Daniels, Dr Carol Jacobi, Dr. Darren Ambrose, Dr. James Wishart, Eddy Batache.) have contributed essays. The book’s foreword was written by Majid Boustany, founder/director of the Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation.

The book invites us to explore the strong bonds Francis Bacon enjoyed with France and Monaco and sheds light on the influence of French culture on the artist’s life and work.

Available to order online (www.henipublishing.com and on amazon) and in bookstores.

Two eminent art historians, Martin Harrison and Eddy Batache, have enriched this publication with their texts. The book closes with a comprehensive chronology of the artist.

Out of Print. New edition available.