An accessible presentation of Bacon's entire oeuvre of paintings, punctuated by quotes from eminent artists such as Lucian Freud and Damien Hirst
Quarter-bound with cloth, this volume compiles the complete paintings of Francis Bacon, the dissident darling of the 20th-century art world. Over a career spanning more than five decades, Bacon produced almost 500 paintings, including his signature diptychs and triptychs. Francis Bacon: Paintings charts his entire lifetime of radical artistry, from his early Surrealist experiments of the 1920s to the stark, elegiac works completed just before his death. It features over 700 high-quality reproductions that capture the vigor and detail of Bacon's paintings. In lieu of lengthy essays, brief expository texts accompany select works, indexing the emergence of key formal and thematic developments in his practice. Also interspersed throughout are quotes from Bacon as well as from eminent friends, critics and admirers, such as Lucian Freud, Roald Dahl and Damien Hirst. Read together, the quotes animate a critical dialogue on the artist's work and legacy. While Gilles Deleuze purported that Bacon was interested in "...a static or potential violence, a violence of reaction and expression," the artist himself asserted, "I never look for violence…but life is violent; so much more violent than anything I can do!" Emerging from a turbulent inner life and the devastation of World War II, the Irish British painter Francis Bacon (1909–92) created art that is both unsettling and hypnotic, repulsive and irresistible, earning him a reputation as a "master of the grotesque." Eschewing the abstraction preferred in the mid-century, Bacon instead developed a quasi-realist style that rendered the human figure as warped and anguished. Laura Scalabrella Spada completed her PhD at University College London in the Department of History of Art in 2020. Her research focuses on early modern European art, with a particular emphasis on the body and its processes, boundaries and relations. She has published papers on the politics of corporeality and animation in early modern prints and currently works as an independent researcher.
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Self-Portrait with Injured Eye (1972) is reproduced from new release Francis Bacon: Paintings, The Complete Collection—an essential volume for any fan of the notoriously hedonistic Irish-born British artist’s raw and unsettling work—featuring more than 740 color reproductions over 568 pages. One of the most important, and yet consistently disturbing artists of the twentieth century, “Bacon created paintings that throb with life’s most harrowing truths,” author Laura Scalabrella Spada writes in her Introduction: “the fragility of flesh, the howling void of existence and the strange, grotesque beauty of human suffering. His paintings do not invite contemplation. They demand confrontation, thrusting viewers into visceral worlds where the boundaries of body and psyche dissolve into a raw, primal essence.” In addition to Spada’s texts, the book is interspersed with quotes by the artist and his wide circle of esteemed friends and colleagues, including Lucian Freud, Tracey Emin and J.G. Ballard, who writes, “Bacon’s paintings were screams from the abattoir, cries from the execution pits of World War II. His deranged executives and his princes of death in their pontiffs’ robes lacked all pity and remorse. His popes screamed because they knew there was no God.” continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 11.75 x 9.75 in. / 568 pgs / 742 color / 2 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $55.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $85 ISBN: 9781911736226 PUBLISHER: HENI Publishing AVAILABLE: 3/3/2026 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA ONLY
Published by HENI Publishing. Edited by Laura Scalabrella Spada.
An accessible presentation of Bacon's entire oeuvre of paintings, punctuated by quotes from eminent artists such as Lucian Freud and Damien Hirst
Quarter-bound with cloth, this volume compiles the complete paintings of Francis Bacon, the dissident darling of the 20th-century art world. Over a career spanning more than five decades, Bacon produced almost 500 paintings, including his signature diptychs and triptychs. Francis Bacon: Paintings charts his entire lifetime of radical artistry, from his early Surrealist experiments of the 1920s to the stark, elegiac works completed just before his death. It features over 700 high-quality reproductions that capture the vigor and detail of Bacon's paintings. In lieu of lengthy essays, brief expository texts accompany select works, indexing the emergence of key formal and thematic developments in his practice. Also interspersed throughout are quotes from Bacon as well as from eminent friends, critics and admirers, such as Lucian Freud, Roald Dahl and Damien Hirst. Read together, the quotes animate a critical dialogue on the artist's work and legacy. While Gilles Deleuze purported that Bacon was interested in "...a static or potential violence, a violence of reaction and expression," the artist himself asserted, "I never look for violence…but life is violent; so much more violent than anything I can do!"
Emerging from a turbulent inner life and the devastation of World War II, the Irish British painter Francis Bacon (1909–92) created art that is both unsettling and hypnotic, repulsive and irresistible, earning him a reputation as a "master of the grotesque." Eschewing the abstraction preferred in the mid-century, Bacon instead developed a quasi-realist style that rendered the human figure as warped and anguished.
Laura Scalabrella Spada completed her PhD at University College London in the Department of History of Art in 2020. Her research focuses on early modern European art, with a particular emphasis on the body and its processes, boundaries and relations. She has published papers on the politics of corporeality and animation in early modern prints and currently works as an independent researcher.
