Foundation interior shots Copyright The Estate of Francis Bacon All Rights Reserved’
The FRANCIS BACON MB Art Foundation is a private non-profit institute, dedicating its activities and research to the most enigmatic and uncompromising British figurative artist of the post-war era.
Established by property developer Majid Boustany, the foundation’s mission is to promote a deeper understanding of the work, life and methodologies of Bacon worldwide, with a focus on the time the artist lived and worked in Monaco and Southern France. Boustany first came across Francis Bacon’s work whilst taking a course in Art History alongside his Business and International Relations studies in London. An encounter with Bacon’s seminal triptych Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944) at Tate Britain started Boustany on a path of discovery that continues to this day: “Bacon’s enigmatic triptych challenged interpretation and triggered in me the need to explore his world”, Boustany says.
Reinhard Hassert and Francis Bacon, Casino Gardens, Monte-Carlo, 1981
© Eddy Batache_courtesy MB Art Collection
Boustany’s fascination for the artist’s oeuvre has now lasted more than twenty years. He quickly discovered that Bacon had lived and worked in Monaco from July 1946 to the early 1950s and frequently returned to the Principality throughout his life. “Bacon often made references to his life and work in Monaco”, says Boustany, who has lived in Monaco for more than thirty years.
The Cote d’Azur exerted a powerful attraction over European artists and intellectuals from the 1920’s to the 1950’s. Notable visitors and residents included: Aldous Huxley, Thomas Mann, D.H. Lawrence, W.B. Yeats, Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Pierre Bonnard, Graham Sutherland and Le Corbusier. In 1946, Bacon sold Painting 1946 to art dealer Erica Brausen for £200. With the proceeds of the sale, Bacon moved to Monaco in July of the same year and it remained his main residence until the early 1950s.
Francis Bacon’s studio, January 1960 Copyright Sotheby, The Cecil Beaton Studio Archive
MB Art Collection
Bacon’s Monegasque years would remain one of the periods of his life about which he talked most positively, saying that he found Monaco “very good for pictures falling ready made into the mind”. As Boustany says, “Although few people know about Bacon’s time in Monaco, there is a legitimate reason for housing the Bacon Foundation in the principality: it was in Monaco that Bacon really began to concentrate on painting the human form, a crucial step that would lead him later in his life to become one of the greatest figurative British post war artists.”
Boustany has been building a comprehensive art collection over a number of years that now includes: a selection of works by Francis Bacon from the late 1920s to the early 1980s, as well as pieces by notable peers; a unique photographic archive on the artist by leading photographers, as well as pictures taken by his friends, family and lovers; a comprehensive collection of Bacon exhibition catalogues; a wide selection of the artist’s graphic works; a unique array of working documents from Bacon’s various studios; a number of rare items from Bacon’s furniture and rug design period; and an extensive library on the artist, offering an essential resource for scholars.
Housed on the ground floor of Villa Elise at 21 Boulevard d’Italie, in the heart of Monaco, the Foundation will be open to scholars and art historians throughout the year and to the general public, by appointment, from March 2015. According to Boustany: “The idea of a small and intimate space for the Foundation came from a remark Bacon made after his legendary 1977 show at the Galerie Claude Bernard in Paris. The artist enjoyed exhibiting his work in this small gallery, where his paintings seemed more intense”.
As part of its mission, the Foundation will support emerging artists and organise exhibitions in collaboration with other institutions.
The art historian Katharina Günther is the first scholar to be sponsored by the Foundation. She will undertake a year’s research to analyse a collection of hitherto un-researched material associated with Francis Bacon.
The Estate of Francis Bacon welcomes the Foundation and will collaborate with it on research and educational activities. The art historian, Martin Harrison, editor of the Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, is on the board of this institute.
The foundation will become one of the many important cultural offerings in Monaco and the Côte d’Azur, alongside the Musée Matisse in Nice, the Musée Picasso and the Hartung Bergman Foundation in Antibes, the Jean Cocteau Museum in Menton and the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul de Vence.
