SEATED FIGURE, 1977

  • Seated Figure 1977

    Seated Figure, 1977

    Etching, edition size: 90, H 134cm  x W 100cm

    ©The Estate of Francis Bacon

    Seated Figure (1977), 1992, shows Francis Bacon’s continued focus on the solitary human form. A lone figure sits within one of his familiar enclosed spaces, the setting reduced to sharp lines and flat planes of colour. The composition is controlled and direct, the figure’s distorted posture creating a quiet tension rather than overt drama.
     
    By this point in his career, Bacon’s work had become more restrained but no less powerful. In Seated Figure, the sense of isolation is clear, a single body held in stillness, caught between presence and disappearance. It reflects Bacon’s ongoing interest in how the human form conveys psychological pressure and emotional weight through minimal means.
     
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  • “We are born alone and we die alone. The rest is a kind of illusion.”

     

    – Francis Bacon

    Bacon once said that he painted “the brutality of fact,” and isolation was one of those facts. His figures are trapped within their own bodies, caught between desire and despair, movement and paralysis. Even when two figures appear, in his wrestling or coupling scenes, they seem to exist on separate emotional planes, never truly connected. The isolation in Bacon’s paintings mirrors both his personal detachment and his broader view of the human condition: that each person, no matter how close to others, ultimately exists alone.