Bacon, Francis (1909-92), Irish-born British painter, whose highly individual, expressionistic style, based on images of terror and outrage, made him one of the most original of 20th-century artists. He was born in Dublin and settled in London in the late 1920s.
Largely self-taught, he began to paint full time after World War II. In paintings such as Head Surrounded by Sides of Beef (Study After Velázquez) (1954, Art Institute of Chicago) and a 1952 series depicting snarling dogs, Bacon attempted, by the use of bizarre or sadistic subject matter, to shock the viewer into an awareness of cruelty and violence. In much of his later work he concentrated on a series of huge triptychs relating to the crucifixion, with mutilated male figures set in nightmarish sealed rooms, as in Three Studies for a Crucifixion (1962, Guggenheim Museum, New York City).