Picasso - Bacon : What It Feels Like to Be Human

In this richly illustrated volume, Francis Bacon and Pablo Picasso emerge as the defining forces behind the modern image of the human figure.

By placing the work of Bacon and Picasso in sustained visual and conceptual conversation, this publication examines one of the most consequential artistic relationships of the 20th century. Over five decades shaped by political upheaval, war, and cultural rupture, both artists pursued an uncompromising interrogation of what it means to be human—through violence and vulnerability, erotic tension and psychological exposure, historical trauma and private anguish.
The book traces parallel investigations into the body under pressure: the scream, crucifixion imagery, the distortion of flesh, and the persistent return to Old Master sources. Picasso’s radical formal experiments of the 1920s and 1930s form a crucial point of departure for Bacon’s earliest paintings, while later chapters follow how each artist developed distinct yet intersecting responses to suffering, power, and desire.
The publication advances new research into the literary, psychological, and visual frameworks the two artists share, revealing how modern life—war, spectacle, intimacy, and catastrophe—shaped their radically different yet profoundly connected treatments of the human presence. With contributions grounded in close visual analysis and historical rigor, this volume offers the most comprehensive account to date of their intertwined legacies.