7 Reece Mews

One of the most powerful painters of our age, Francis Bacon lived and worked for the last thirty years of his life in a modest building in Londons South Kensington. After he died in 1992, access was granted to award-winning photographer Perry Ogden to work undisturbed for days on end to produce this riveting record of the house and its contents. In the studio itself, thirty years of inspired artistic endeavor had accumulated unchecked: the slashed and discarded canvases scattered across the floor; the brushes, rags, and tins encrusted with paint; the doors and walls used as impromptu palettes; the piles of photographs of friends and models; the crumpled and torn pages of magazines and books that served as a stimulus for Bacons work; the notes, sketches, and ideas for paintings jotted down and then cast aside; the last unfinished self-portrait on the easel. For some of those close to Bacon, the studio was a heroic statement, a work of art in its own right, secretly constructed over many years to distill and give form to his aesthetic intentions. Now in this astonishing book we are invited to take a privileged look around this private space, to become intimate witnesses to the amazing conditions in which Bacon lived and worked, to gain unrivaled insights into how, why, and what he painted. 60 color photographs.