Poster for Francis Bacon’s First Russian Exhibition Poster

This iconic poster was printed to advertise the first retrospective exhibition in Russia granted to a living British artist since the Russian Revolution, an event that provoked passionate and polarised responses in the national and international press.
The event as such was organised by and held under the auspices of the British Council through its offices in Moscow.
Expecting the exhibition to be of limited appeal, it is believed that only 250 posters were printed and at the end of the show only 30 were left unused.
The appeal of the exhibition far exceeded the expectations of the organizers and it made the art establishment and the art-loving public of Russia acknowledge Francis Bacon as one of the greatest artists of the 20 th century.
This exhibition poster printed to announce a truly significant occasion in the evolution of Francis Bacon’s global reputation is a gem with historical connotations of significance.
This is a poster that one could live with on a daily basis, so to say, as the Great Master appears to have infused an inner serenity and placidity into the image of John Edwards, who was a troubled and psychologically dislocated man, a man of inner turbulence and turmoil.
The contrasting colour combination though striking rests easily on the eye and the Cyrillic writing enhances the graphics, thereby creating a slick and stylish poster.
When a catalogue of FB’s posters comes to be written, as it surely will in the not-too-distant future, this poster will be recognised not only as one that announced a landmark exhibition of one of the major artists of the 20 th century but also as one of extreme rarity.
The poster is not only rare but also ranks as a must-have item for an avid collector of affordable Francis Bacon artwork and memorabilia.

Reference: Bacon In Moscow by James Birch

It is the uproarious and personal memoir of the then-young London gallerist, James Birch that gives an account of his audacious endeavour to mount a major retrospective of Francis Bacon’s work in the Central House of Artists, Moscow, in 1988, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
It also the story of the stranger-than-fiction evolution of the exhibition for which this poster was created, an exhibition that was at the artistic and political heart of a sea change that culminated with the fall of the USSR, and which 400,000 people visited in six weeks, having not seen the work of a living Western Artist on Russian soil for over fifty years.