Francis Bacon was born to English parents living in Dublin, Ireland, on October 28, 1909. After travelling to Germany and France as a young man, he settled in London - initially working as an interior decorator and furniture designer - and took up painting in his twenties.
Bacon himself considers 1944 as the true beginning of his artistic career. It was in this year that he created his breakthrough work 'Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion'. His works from the 1940s to the 1960s depict the human figure in scenes of alienation, violence and suffering, and are considered some of the most important artworks of the postwar era.
Though Bacon never made original prints himself, he worked closely with master printmakers and renowned studios to create high quality reproductions of his paintings as lithographs and etchings.
Francis Bacon died in Madrid, Spain, on April 28, 1992.