As LACMA prepares for the 2026 public opening of the new David Geffen Galleries, the future home of the museum’s permanent collection spanning a breadth of eras and cultures, we’re sharing 50 iconic artworks that will be on view in the building over the next 50 weeks in the series 50 Works 50 Weeks.
Irish-born British painter Francis Bacon was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, celebrated for his raw, distorted images that convey both physical and psychological intensity. Among his most prized works are his triptychs, which he likened to cinematic sequences: “I like the juxtaposition of the images separated on three different canvases.”
This life-size triptych portrays Bacon’s friend and rival, artist Lucian Freud. Dressed in a white shirt and seated on a simple wooden chair, Freud twists from panel to panel within a transparent, stage-like frame. Awkward and self-assured, his shifting body reveals small but striking details such as the sole of a shoe and a trouser leg exposing bare skin. Bacon painted from photographs rather than life, distilling likeness into abstraction. Bacon remarked in 1973, “Even though the face is very abstract and contorted I think I caught a real likeness of Lucian… Freud sat like that and wore his clothes like that.” Bacon insisted that his painting be hung in gold frames and protected by glass, which he thought imparted an evenness to the surface, and recalled Old Master paintings. The formal, elegant presentation heightens the tension with the confrontational, raw images.
The painting has not been seen publicly since being acquired by Elaine Wynn at auction in 2013, for a world-record price. Wynn recounted at the time: “I was gobsmacked. I was afraid I wasn’t going to own it—I’ve never had a reaction like that before.” After acquiring the painting she indicated that she intended to donate it after her death. Three Studies of Lucian Freud is the first Bacon in LACMA’s collection and the only triptych by him in a California public collection.