PICASSO – BACON What It Means to Be Human

More than one hundred works from international museums and private collections bring the paintings of Pablo Picasso and Francis Bacon into direct confrontation. The exhibition places the two most influential figurative painters of the twentieth century side by side, revealing striking parallels in their treatment of the human figure and underscoring Picasso’s importance for the generation that followed.

Francis Bacon decided to become a painter after encountering Picasso’s work. For the rest of his life he measured himself against him, seeking to achieve for the late twentieth century what Picasso had embodied for the first half: a chronicler of human existence in all its fragmentation. In both oeuvres the human figure occupies the center. Bodies are pulled apart, reassembled, and radically transformed, giving form to pain, desire, and vulnerability. Motifs such as crucifixions, screams, bullfights, nudes, and the Tears of Eros recur as images of life’s underlying drama. Picasso himself was never influenced by Bacon, yet he followed his career with close attention.