Francis Bacon's Triptych coming to Sotheby's auction in May

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The Irish born British artist Francis Bacon is one of the last century’s biggest artist. His abstracted figures are often isolated in geometrical cages which, set against flat and non descriptive backgrounds, give them a vague 3D depth. Now, Sotheby's New York has announced that Francis Bacon’s large-format Triptych Inspired by the Oresteia of Aeschylus will highlight their Contemporary Art Evening Auction in New York on 13 May 2020. This three-pieced artwork from 1981 is inspired by Aeschylus’s trilogy of Greek tragedies dating to the 5th century B.C., and Bacon revisits the same classical text that inspired Three Studies for Figures at the Base of the Crucifixion, which announced his debut on the world stage in 1962. A parallel to that early triumph, Triptych Inspired by the Oresteia of Aeschylus reveals in a single work the entire range of Bacon’s iconography, developed over three decades of painting.

The estimated fetch, for this incredible Francis Bacon triptych, is approximately $60 million USD. However, this is not the first time a triptych from Bacon has been sold for a staggering figure. In 2013, the artist’s Three Studies of Lucian Freud from 1969 sold for, at the time, a record $142 million USD.