TRIPTYCH (CENTRE), 1983

  • Triptych 1983 (centre panel), Francis Bacon
    Triptych 1983 (centre panel), 1983
    Lithograph, edition size 180, H x 67 x w 50cm 
    ©The Estate of Francis Bacon 
    Triptych 1983 (Centre Panel) presents one of Francis Bacon’s most controlled yet unsettling compositions from his late period. The figure appears suspended in an undefined space, its body twisted and partially obscured as if caught mid-motion. Unlike the surrounding panels, this central image feels quieter and more ambiguous, the energy drawn inward rather than outward. Bacon creates tension through restraint, letting absence carry as much weight as form.
     
    The bright orange background, a repeat colour throughout this series, serves less as a backdrop and more as an active force, an environment that both isolates and exposes the figure. Here, Bacon’s long-standing themes of confinement and fragility surface with renewed subtlety. The Centre Panel acts as a moment of pause within the triptych.
     
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  • The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.


    - Francis Bacon

    In many of his paintings and prints, orange functions as more than a background; it becomes a stage light, trapping his figures in an artificial glow. Against this saturated field, the body appears at once vivid and fragile, suspended in a space that feels both alive and airless. The use of orange in Bacon’s 1980s triptychs and portraits heightens the sense of isolation, giving the viewer no escape from the image. It captures Bacon’s belief that intensity was essential to truth, that colour, like flesh, should feel immediate, confrontational, and impossible to ignore.