This «Bacon letters» is not just a Bacon between the lines and in very large formats. It is also, according to the determination of its curator Didier Ottinger, the Francis Bacon (Dublin 1909-Madrid 1992) at the peak of his mastery. The painter, after 1971, which has previously been more than experimental and is now able to resume his paintings have become iconic to reinterpret them completely. Study of Red Pope, 1962 Second version , 1971, out of a particular collection, and Second Version of Painting 1946″ , Museum of Modern Art, New York , 1971, from the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, up this path of excellence. He makes Bacon the terrible, sensualist fascinated by the stalls of butchers and the momentum bestial of the flesh, the painter almost subliminal that raises the ghosts of the body on fund-delicate pink, heavenly blue, mauve, English, orange for the middle of summer.

see you at the top with Bacon begins with a self-Portrait (1976), given at the Cantini Museum of Marseille, flanked by his two préfaciers French, Michel Leiris from the first paris exhibition in 1966 at the galerie Maeght and Jacques Dupin, who takes over on the death of Leiris, for the Galerie Lelong. The series of the Popes , the most famous and the most celebrated of Bacon, there is here, therefore, in an allusive sense, as an introduction to engineering, this marginal.

Code reading

The first three triptychs, described by an English critic of the «triptychs» black, although pink and purple, for their inspiration – the suicide sordid of his companion George Dyer, melancholic past of boxer, two days before the retrospective in the Grand Palais in 1971, open wide the range of themes and forms, this code will read that the visitor acquires a block.

there is a story in these paintings that have something sacred by their size, their trio, the golden wood of their frames. A creepy tale of the human condition

A palette that explodes with intensity after the drama, «a time release technique and the psychological,» points out Didier Ottinger. There is a story in these paintings that have something sacred by their size, their trio, the golden wood of their frames. A creepy tale of the human condition. «Bacon letters»? This story in images, whether pictorial, is facing six times to authors and books that have belonged to the vast library of Bacon’s self-taught. Small rooms are empty, in the withdrawal-like confessionals, where texts – a brief, but eloquent – are played by actors, are the echo of his memory. Some face-to-face are obvious and explicit, such as the Triptych inspired by The Orestes of Aeschylus , 1981, who came of the Astrup Fearnley Museet in Oslo. Sometimes, it is more allusive, as the interest for bullfighting which came from Michel Leiris ( Study for Bullfight II , 1969, loaned by the Musée des beaux-arts of Lyon, or Study of a bull , 1991, private collection).

The works of Bacon, the bodies of the wrestlers photographed by Eadweard Muybridge in the Nineteenth, which serve as models, to the table carried, the board «immaculate», is the Ariadne’s thread of this superb retrospective (the metaphor of sexual clear enough to Water from a Running Tap , 1982, private collection). The extraordinary clarity and precision of the table wins in this very museum, from one man to the workshop legendary for its chaos and dirt, to the life more than tumultuous that the excesses beyond the imagination of ordinary mortals.

Bacon in all letters, Centre Pompidou, Rue Beaubourg, next to rue Saint-Merri (IVe). Tel.: 01 44 78 12 33. Schedule: everyday from 11 am to 21 pm, except mar. until 20 jan. 2020. Catalogue: «Bacon letters» (Ed. C. P., 42 €).