From 3 October 2017 to 14 January 2018, Francis Bacon's Two Figures, 1953, will be on display at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge as part of their 'Degas: A Passion for Perfection' exhibition.
The show marks the centenary of the death of artist Edgar Degas and celebrates his lifetime's achievements. Within the exhibition there will be a range of his work including painting, pastels, drawings, watercolours, prints of different types of counterproofs and bronze and wax sculptures.
The exhibition's final section examines Degas’s artistic legacy in the 20th and 21st centuries, notably in the work of Walter Sickert, Pablo Picasso, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, R.B. Kitaj, Ryan Gander and Francis Bacon. It is here that Two Figures, 1953, makes it's mark, on show for the first time since the Grand Palais ‘Francis Bacon’ exhibition of 1971.
Bacon painted Two Figures, 1953, at the Berkshire cottage of Peter Lacy, during the most intense stage of their love affair. The 'Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonné' remarks on the painting:
'The curtained background is augmented with extra vertical striations through the two heads, simultaneously diffusing and activating the embrace, while the textures of the flesh and white sheets are painted with exquisitely directed vigour and élan. The 'mahogany' bed-heads, an atypically domestic inclusion, was anticipated in (or repeated in) 'Lying Figure', c.1953 (53-21).'
Degas: A Passion for Perfection
Fitzwilliam Museum
3 October 2017 - 14 January 2018
Free admission
Cambridge, UK
Word ref: Fitzwilliam Museum website and the ‘Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonné’, 2016, Voll II, p. 360.
*Please note all details including names, dates and featured works, opening days/hours are subject to change. Ahead of a visiting, we recommend contacting the Fitzwilliam Museum for all confirmation regarding the display.
