Francis Bacon: Man and Beast review – the brutal truth

Royal Academy, London
The painter’s preoccupation with our animal urges is laid bare in this magnificent collection of nightmarish brutes and lovers in tormentThe first hint of what is to come is a large bared canine tooth, in Head 1 (1948). The painting featured in Francis Bacon’s debut London exhibition the year after it was made, and it greets you now in an opening room of its own at the Royal Academy. The human form in the painting, which emerges out of a black background within