Francis Bacon
Photographs of the artist's studio, by Perry Ogden

This exhibition of the last photographs of the painter Francis Bacon's London studio captures the creative intensity with which every element of his environment was imbibed. In 1998, after photographer Perry Ogden had beautifully recorded its 'carefully mounted chaos', the studio was dismantled and installed in the Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane. The Centre Culturel Irlandais is grateful to the Dublin City Gallery for lending this series of photographs.

Francis Bacon was born in Dublin in 1909 and moved to London in 1925, where he was to become a well-known Soho personality embracing the excesses of 1960s England. His influence on Irish art is as profound as it is on world art. Expressionist in style, his powerful images depict the corruption of the interior of the human being. They possess a ghastliness, and at the same time, a fascinating quality in their treatment of flesh and blood, exploring the ambiguity of man?s physical frailty and his tremendous capacity for emotion.

Although Bacon lived most of his life in England, he enjoyed his Irish roots. The transfer of his Reece Mews studio to Dublin, would have made him 'roar with laughter' full of warmth and joy' (John Edwards).