Francis Bacon

Known for: the triptych form; distorted figurative painting

Francis Bacon was self-taught, having destroyed most of his early work, and produced a body of painting from the 1940s onward in which the human figure is subjected to distortion, blurring, and confinement within abstract space. His triptychs — including the Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944) that introduced him to public attention — treat the human body as a site of psychological and physical anguish. He worked in a deliberately chaotic studio environment, using chance as a formal tool.