Into the Light

     Beginning in the 1950's Francis Bacon developed a new kind of style, one in which it was much less distorted.  The images also seemed to resemble events and people that he encountered in real life, of these types of paintings included a series he started in 1954 called Man in Blue I - VII.  This series was made up of a single man in a business suit, in front of a plain wall, painted in a dark deep blue hue. 
     Moving out of the darkness of the paintings he's done before, Bacon did a study on Vincent van Gogh, and slowly the overwhelming darkness was eliminated from his paintings.  He did seven of these paintings with van Gogh's paintings as inspiration.  This series consisted of nearly life size figures with short, frantic brushstrokes.  Much like van Gogh's but more convulsive.
     In the late 1950's Bacon started another series, which he is focusing on a single figure, occasionally nude, sitting in a brightly lit space on a couch, or other piece of furniture.  The figures in these paintings are much more detailed and solid, instead of vanishing into the background.*


*Ronald Alley. "Bacon, Francis." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed April 28, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T005594