Francis Bacon at the Prado in Madrid 3 February – 19 April 2009

Study after Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X. Oil on canvas, 153 x 118 cm.

Curator: Manuela Mena. Chief curator of 18th Painting and Goya at the Museo del Prado. Rooms A and B. Jerónimos Building

Museo del Prado will be hosting next February the major retrospective exhibition on Francis Bacon organised by Tate Britain in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in collaboration with the Prado, to commemorate the centenary of the artit’s birth in October 1909. The exhibition comprises many of the Irish-born artist’s fundamental pieces, whose impressive style has turned him into one of the most singular and influential painters of the last century and will be shown in three cities which had a significant importance for him: London, where the show is currently on view, Madrid and New York. In Madrid, the exhibition has a special meaning since Bacon not only reflected in his works his knowledge concerning Spanish masters, such as Velázquez and Goya, but because he also died in Madrid on April 28 1992. Not to mention that he frequently visited the Prado during the last years of his life.