Centre Panel, from: Triptych March 1974 continues Francis Bacon’s series of deeply personal works reflecting on loss and mortality in the years following the death of George Dyer. In this composition, Bacon presents a solitary, distorted figure set against a stark, open space, a form caught between movement and collapse. The atmosphere is quiet but charged, the muted tones amplifying a sense of stillness and psychological tension.
The 1974 triptych marks a period in which Bacon was no longer depicting the immediate shock of Dyer’s death, but rather living with its aftermath. The central panel, in particular, captures this state of uneasy persistence, the figure suspended between memory and disappearance. It is both elegy and self-reflection, a continuation of Bacon’s lifelong effort to visualise the fragile boundary between life and its inevitable erasure.
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Centre panel, from: Triptych March 1974, 1978Lithographs in colours, circa 1978, on wove paper, signed in black pen.31.5 x 23.5 inch©The Estate of Francis Bacon
