The reason for the current Studiolo presentation is the new acquisition of the painting "Turning Figure" from 1963 by the 3rd Rubens Prize winner Francis Bacon.
With the total of seven exemplary works by Bacon in the Lambrecht-Schadeberg Collection, the painting "Turning Figure" opens up a further perspective in Bacon's artistic work. In connection with the latest research on Bacon's pictorial sources, expanded interpretation possibilities arise.
A street scene can be seen: a figure turns around and looks back at an invisible event. With an eerie stream of white mass on the pavement, however, it seems to be indicated. As mysterious as this work is at first glance, it motivates a closer look. Above all, a look at Bacon's studio in London's Reece Mews offers a proverbial glimpse behind the scenes: there the colorful, ankle-deep chaos of battered books, paint-smeared photographs and newspaper fragments proves to be an overflowing store of information that has been ordered and organized in recent years for the Bacon research was made available. Here you can see which books and magazines Bacon owned and read.
Several of these sources make “Turning Figure” talk. Not only the historical localization in the human abysses of the 20th century becomes clear, but also the working process of Bacon. Two other paintings from the Lambrecht-Schadeberg Collection – both painterly studies based on Diego Velázquez's famous portrait of the Pope – are also included in this examination of Bacon's image storage.
The Studiolo presentation was developed jointly by Christian Spies, curator of the Lambrecht-Schadeberg Collection, with the Bacon specialist Katharina Günther, who has been researching the image sources in Bacon's studio in recent years and recently published these results.