Study for the Nurse in the Film "Battleship Potemkin", 1957

About the Work

Francis Bacon has locked a naked, screaming woman into a confined space constructed in perspective. He quoted the image from a scene in Sergei Eisenstein’s ‘Battleship Potemkin’, a film about an attack on civilians in Odessa in 1905, the event that triggers this scream. Bacon omits the narrative elements; the figure becomes a metaphorical bearer of pain. The glazing of the canvas – a part of the artist’s concept – creates a reflection that throws the viewer back upon himself. At the same time, the glass puts a distance between him and the existential scream.