Gone for £43m ... Francis Bacon painting smashes auction records

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A nightmarish Francis Bacon painting sold for a record £43.14 million last night at an auction in New York.

Three bidders were involved in the auction for the work called Triptych, 1976.
Sotheby's described the painting as a "masterpiece of the 20th century" and the most important work by the British artist in private hands.
The identity of the successful bidder was not immediately known.
The $86.28 million winning bid set a new record for a piece of Contemporary art. Scroll down for more...
Disturbing: Triptych, 1976 at Sotheby's, where it smashed earlier records for a Bacon work




The painting was sold at Sotheby's in New York by a private European collector who has owned the Bacon since it was first exhibited in Paris in 1977.
The three-panelled picture depicts a headless human form surrounded by three vultures and flanked by two portraits of disfigured human faces.
The new Bacon record comes just two days after a Lucian Freud painting of a naked London Jobcentre supervisor sold for £17 million at rival auction house Christie's, also in New York, setting a new world record for a work by a living artist.
Anglo-Irishman Bacon used Ancient Greek legends as inspiration for the work.
The central figure alludes to the legend of Prometheus, who has his liver perpetually devoured by an eagle as punishment for giving fire to mankind.
A spokesman for Sotheby's in New York said:"The work reveals in a single composition the entire range of Bacon's iconography over three decades of painting, cantering on the tortured figure of Prometheus, the bringer of fire to mankind and the subject of Aeschylus' play Prometheus Bound. Scroll down for more...
Crucible: The chaotic studio where Bacon, below, created his disturbing visions





Alex Branczik, Sotheby's London deputy director for contemporary art, described the masterpiece as a "totemic triptych".
He said: "It created an overnight sensation when it was first exhibited in Paris in 1976. It showed Bacon working in a new way.
"It is a watershed painting which sees him moving beyond personal grief on to a more universal scale.
The previous record for a Bacon masterpiece was set last year when Study For Innocent X. 1962 went for £26 million.
Bacon (1909-1992) was born in Dublin to English parents and moved to London in 1926.
Although he had no formal training as an artist, he started to exhibit his work in the 1930s and decade later he was causing sensation among the artistic community with his angst-ridden paintings of twisted and mutated forms. He died of a heart attack in Madrid in 1992. Today, his work is among the most popular of 20th-century art at auction.

Gone for £43m ... Nightmarish Francis Bacon painting smashes auction records | the Daily Mail