The art of Francis Bacon (1909-1992) - his dramatic images of screaming figures and distorted anatomies seems to incarnate the darkness and despair that humanity felt in the wake of World War II. Epitomizing the angst at the core of the modern human condition, these tableaux are also painted with a richly gestural technique, alluding to such Old Masters as Titian, Velazquez and Rembrandt. Although celebrated as a portraitist - especially focusing on such friends as Lucian Freud and other members of the bohemian circles in which he moved in London's Soho district - Bacon's vision ranged widely across space and time. Indeed, his themes encompassed landscape, mythology, poetry, the cinema and his own lurid life. With consummate painterly craft, Bacon synthesized these strands into complex allusive and elusive images.
