Francis Bacon is the most important British painter of the twentieth century.
He initially established his reputation in London in the 1940s when he was widely publicised for the horror of his imagery, in which he sought to strip man of any veneer of civilisation to expose the psyche of the subject and reveal the Human Condition.He is often associated with the School of London, a circle of figurative painters that includes Michael Andrews, Frank Auerbach, Lucian Freud, Leon Kossoff and R.B.Kitaj. In his recreation of the subject Bacon built from Picasso to create a brilliantly inventive art that combined chance with control.