Francis Bacon: Triptychs

Published to accompany Francis Bacon: Triptychs, this portfolio gathers the late artist's most ambitious works in the format he prized above all others. "So far as my work has any quality," Bacon reflected in 1979, "I often feel perhaps it is the triptychs that have the most quality." Drawn from public institutions and private collections, the works assembled here trace his lifelong investigation of the three-panel form — from dramatic studies of the human body to the intimate, mug-shot portraits of friends and the searing self-portraits of his later years. Gagosian.

Bacon traced the triptych's origins not to its religious antecedents but to the panoramic cinema screen, reinventing a devotional format as something wholly modern: three distinct canvases held in tension, each image sharpening against the others rather than resolving into a single narrative.

Presented as a portfolio of large-format colour plates housed in a cloth-covered clamshell box, the publication also includes a volume of facsimile letters from Bacon to the French writer Michel Leiris, written between 1966 and 1989 — a rare window onto one of the artist's closest literary friendships.