About the production
The Irish painter Francis Bacon took the proverbial liberty to do things he wanted to do in a very comprehensive sense. Alcohol and drug excesses were the order of the day for him, and he also unrestrainedly indulged his gambling addiction. In a climate of pronounced repression, he was not afraid to enter into relationships with older or younger men, some of whom were socially much higher or lower than he was, which was a double provocation in class-conscious and homophobic England. He also took the liberty of making his lovers the subject of his paintings and letting the theme of violence become a leitmotif of his pictorial work.
Bacon's paintings revolve around the tortured creature, they are uncomfortable and oppressive and at the same time of grandiose expressiveness. This is what earned Bacon the unqualified esteem of the art world, no matter how objectionable one might find his way of life.