By Francis Bacon (1909-1992) Circa. 1946 Surrealism/Expressionism
This work named “Painting†is considered by most critics to be Francis Bacon's magnum opus. Ironically, the shape of this piece was created by a sheer accident. The work was originally to be of a chimpanzee instead of a man and would have featured long grass and a bird. In an interview with David Sylvester, he describes creating the piece in an unconscious exercise.
Bacon:"Well, one of the pictures I did in 1946, which was the thing that's in the Museum of Modern Art…" Sylvester:"The butcher-shop picture." Bacon:"Yes. It came to me as an accident. I was attempting to make a bird alighting on a field. And it may have been bound up in some way with the three forms that had gone before, but suddenly the line that I had drawn suggested something totally different and out of this suggestion arose this picture. I had no intention to do this picture; I never thought of it in that way. It was like one continuous accident mounting on top of another."
“Painting†went through a number of sales before it was finally sold to the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) in 1948. Today, the work is too fragile to be moved anywhere else.
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