Francis Bacon: Man and Beast

The Royal Academy presents a solo exhibition of Francis Bacon‘s work, focusing on the artist’s relationship with animals: how this shaped his approach to the human body and distorted it, making his figures difficult to recognise as human or beastly.

Bacon is fascinated by the way animals, wild animals but also dogs and birds, move and behave, considering animal performance a possible key to understanding human behaviour.

Spanning Bacon‘s 50-year career, highlights include some of his earliest and latest paintings, together with a trio of paintings of bullfights which will be shown together for the first time.