Francis Bacon was born on October 28, 1909, in Dublin. At the age of 16, he moved to London and subsequently lived for two years in Berlin and Paris.

Upon his return to London in 1929, he established himself as a furniture designer and interior designer. Although Bacon never attended art school, he began to draw and work in watercolor. In the fall of that year he began to use oils and exhibited a few paintings as well as furniture and rugs in his studio. His work was included in a group exhibition in London at the Mayor Gallery in 1933. A year later the artist organized his own first solo show at Sunderland House, London, which he called Transition Gallery for the occasion.

Bacon painted relatively little after his solo show in 1934 and in the 1930's and early 1940's destroyed many of his works. He began to paint intensively again in 1944. Pablo Picasso's work decisively influenced his painting until the mid 1940's. From the mid 1940's to the 50's, Bacon's work reflected the influence of Surrealism.

In the 50's, Bacon drew on such sources as Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X and Van Gogh's The Painter on the Road to Tarascon. Bacon soon developed his distinctive style as a figure painter. His mature style, developed in the 1950's, included images of either friends or lovers, or images of people found in movie stills, reproductions of historic paintings and medical photos. His people scream in physical and psychic pain, seemingly tortured. His work was always expressionist in style with distorted human and animal forms.

Bacon's dramatic and riveting work gained international recognition and acclaim. His first major show took place at the Hanover Gallery, London, in 1949. His first solo exhibition outside England was held in 1953 at Durlacher Brothers, New York. His first retrospective was held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 1955.
In 1962, the Tate Gallery, London, organized a Bacon retrospective, a modified version of which traveled to Mannheim, Turin, Zurich, and Amsterdam.

The artist died April 28, 1992, in Madrid.