Yan Pei-Ming’s Obsession with Francis Bacon

What does it mean to truly be ‘wanted’? For some, the word may conjure notions of carnal lust; for others, bittersweet romantic love. For artist Yan Pei-Ming, however, the dynamics of desire can also centre around friendship – and, in the case of his current exhibition at MASSIMODECARLO, London, a notorious one at that: the tumultuous friendship between Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon. 

Yan Pei-Ming’s ‘Wanted’ is inspired by one of the art world’s great unsolved mysteries: the theft of Freud’s 1952 portrait of Bacon, stolen from Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie in 1988. At just 13 centimetres wide, the pocket-sized copper painting has been celebrated by critics as one of Freud’s finest early works. Whilst researching in Tate’s archives, Yan Pei-Ming was struck by a Wild West-style ‘wanted’ poster, offering a 300,000 Deutschmark reward for the stolen painting’s recovery, which Freud plastered around Berlin in 2001. Despite Freud’s best efforts, the painting was never returned. Yan Pei-Ming has now used that image as the starting point for a series of monochrome paintings of Bacon, drawn from archival photographs, which are inflected by the complex friendship and rivalry between two of the 20th century’s most celebrated artists. 

Yan Pei-Ming is well known for his large-scale portraits of people of power: emperors, popes and world leaders. ‘Wanted’, however, begins with a reproduction of Freud’s lost painting of Bacon, which Yan Pei-Ming has honoured by keeping its original, miniature size (all works WANTED FRANCIS BACON, 2025). This was a challenge for the artist; the gallery tells me that he had to buy smaller paintbrushes especially for the endeavour. Here, Bacon’s melancholic eyes are cast downwards to reveal puffy eyelids. His cheeks appear swollen, and one impasto strand of hair is emblazed across his forehead. 

The rest of the exhibition is populated by portraits of Bacon painted from photographs that the artist sourced from the National Portrait Gallery’s archive. These are assembled not in thematic or chronological order but instead in a spatial sequence: after the original-scale reproduction of the stolen painting, the subsequent works are hung from smallest to largest. This eccentric installation means that we encounter images of Bacon at unordered stages of his life, as sporadic and unpredictable as memory itself: one minute we see a severe, older man, the next a dough-faced, middle-aged artist. 

As we journey through the space, we come eye to eye with Bacon. Yan Pei-Ming’s frequently large scale, alongside his limited palette, allows him to emphasize subtle details of the original photographs: the sharp crease of an eyebrow, the pursing of parted lips poised for a rebuke. But it’s Bacon’s penetrating eyes that hold the most power, confronting our gaze as we stand before him. In the gallery, there is no hiding. I feel as if his eyes, which captured so much violence in his own life, are somehow seeing my shadow – the lurking, unconscious parts that we all have, but would rather deny. 

Although the smaller works mark an intriguing shift in Yan Pei-Ming’s practice, it is the larger portraits that feel the most alive. They writhe with intensity and turmoil; paint drips and bleeds across the canvas, embodying the messiness of what it is to have loved and lost. But Bacon’s paintings are surely expressions of the artist’s own emotional landscape as much as representations of his subjects. Despite each of Yan Pei-Ming’s portraits carrying a distinct, near-forensic examination of Bacon the man, I was left wanting a little more: more of Yan Pei-Ming, and the passion behind his fascination with Bacon. Perhaps even more shadow, cast out and brought to the surface – the darkness within, denied and unwanted. 

Yan Pei-Ming’s ‘Wanted’ is on view at MASSIMODECARLO, London, until 8 August 

^{Main image: Yan Pei-Ming, WANTED IN LONDON (detail), 2025, oil on canvas, 150 × 220 cm. Courtesy: © Yan Pei-Ming, ADAGP, Paris, 2025; photograph: Clérin-Morin}