Bacon, Francis (1909-1992)
Triptych August 1972
1972
Oil paint and sand on 3 canvases, each: 198.1 × 147.3 cm
Tate Britain, London
© Estate of Francis Bacon
This work is generally considered one in a series of Black Triptychs which followed the suicide of Bacon’s lover, George Dyer. Dyer appears on the left and Bacon is on the right. The central group is derived from a photograph of wrestlers by Edward Muybridge, but also suggests a more sexual encounter. The seated figures and their coupling are set against black voids and the central flurry has been seen as ‘a life-and death struggle’. The artist’s biographer wrote: ‘What death has not already consumed seeps incontinently out of the figures as their shadows.’ (Tate)