ILFDublin exclusive: PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING authors of the first comprehensive biography of artist Francis Bacon in twenty-five years discuss his remarkable life, work and legacy.

Revelations: Francis Bacon presents a rich, complex and subtle portrait of a commanding modern figure of the twentieth century, an artist born in Dublin who left Ireland as a young man and who once said he ‘couldn’t return until he was dead’. Written with the full co-operation of his estate,  and with unrivalled access to the archives and based on hundreds of interviews and extensive new material, Revelations: Francis Bacon explores the sickly boy who became one of the greatest artists of his time. In the decades following his astonishing breakthrough in 1944 with Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion,  he emerged as a great iconoclast and bon vivant, described by one friend as “a terrific grandee”.

This major new work includes previously unexamined areas such as his career as a designer influenced by Eileen Gray and the significance of his health issues. Annalyn Swan and Mark Stevens are authors of de Kooning: An American Master, which was awarded the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Biography, the National Book Critics Circle prize for biography and the Los Angeles Times biography award.

The authors will be in conversation with writer Colm Tóibín.