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Two studies for a Portrait of george Dyer, 1968

" After all, I've had a very unfortunate life,, because all the people I've been really fond of have died. And you don't stop thinking about them; time doesn't heal. But you concentrate on something which was an obsession, and what you would have put into your obsession with the physical act you put into your work.
Because one of the terrible things about so-called Love, certainly for an artist, I think, is the destruction ".

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon

Untitled ( Marching Figures ) ca. 1950/2

This parade of tiny figures marching through a cage-like structure that towers above them is unique in Francis Bacon's oeuvre. Nevertheless, in its composition and motifs this picture
is comparable with other early paintings, wether in terms of the contrast of large and small
figures or in terms of the motifs of the cage and the curtain.
The model for the parade may have been an illustration in the book Art. Bilan des Artes modernes en France ( 1928 ) by Amèdèe Ozenfant.
Bacon owned the english edition Foundations of Modern Art ( 1931 ) It contains a photographic image of the Soviet army marching across Red Square in front of Lenin's Mausoleum.
Here Bacon replaced the Mausoleum with the cage and Lenin with a large figure which is monumental on it's pedestal-part polar bear, part molar with bear's face.
Bacon responded to the idolization and embalming of Lenin in his own way by fetishising a lifeless tooth, to which the marching figures seem to be paying homage.

In 1953 Bacon produced Not only "The End of the Line" but also more Studies from Velàzquez' portrait of Innocent X and the Series of 8 paintings entitled Studies for a Portrait.
In Bacon's first solo exhibition in New York, the Durlacher Brothers gallery showed around 30 paintings, including five from the studies for a Portrait Series.

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