Bacon, Francis

1909 - Francis Bacon was born 28th of October in 63 Lower Baggot Street Dublin.

1929 - Established himself as a furniture designer and interior designer, he began to use oils and exhibited a few paintings as well as furniture and rugs in his studio. 

1933 - Worked in a group exhibition in London at the Mayor Gallery.

1934 - Organized his own first solo show at Sunderland House, London, which he called Transition Gallery for the occasion.

1937 - Participated in a group show at Thomas Agnew and Sons, London.

1944 - Began to paint intensively; Pablo Picasso's work decisively influenced his painting until the mid 1940's. Created triptych "Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion", "screaming popes" and series of paintings.

1949 - First major show took place at the Hanover Gallery, London.

1953 - Solo exhibition outside England at Durlacher Brothers, New York.

1955 - Retrospective was held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London.

1962 - The Tate Gallery, London, organized a Bacon retrospective, a modified version of which traveled to Mannheim, Turin, Zurich, and Amsterdam.

1963 - Francis Bacon important exhibitions of his work were held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

1971 - The Grand Palais in Paris.

1975 - His paintings from 1968-1974 were exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

1989-1990 - Retrospectives of his work were held at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles Country Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York

1992 - Bacon died 28th of of heart failure brought on by asthma in Madrid, Spain.

• "There be three things which make a nation great and prosperous: a fertile soil, busy workshops, easy conveyance for men and goods from place to place."
• "Croesus said to Cambyses; That peace was better than war; because in peace the sons did bury their fathers, but in wars the fathers did bury their sons."
• "For friends... do but look upon good Books: they are true friends, that will neither flatter nor dissemble."
• "Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly."
• "Fortitude is the marshal of thought, the armor of the will, and the fort of reason."