STUDY FOR HEAD OF LUCIAN FREUD, 1967

Study for Head of Lucian Freud (1967) captures the volatile energy between two of the most significant painters of the twentieth century, whose friendship was as intense as it was fraught. Bacon’s treatment of Freud is both intimate and violent: the face appears twisted, almost liquefied, as if the act of seeing has become a form of dissection. The work reflects Bacon’s obsession with the human head as a vessel of inner life, not a likeness but a psychological event. In this painting, Freud’s identity seems to flicker between familiarity and obliteration, held together only by the force of Bacon’s brush.

 

The painting also mirrors the friction between artist and subject. Freud and Bacon shared years of close companionship before their relationship fractured, and this portrait feels like both admiration and attack. The raw handling of paint transforms the sitter’s features into an arena of emotion and tension, revealing the brutality that can lie beneath intimacy. It stands as one of Bacon’s most charged depictions of another artist, a portrait that doesn’t flatter but exposes, showing how creation and destruction are often the same gesture.