Bringing home the Bacon

Bacon's triptych Two Figures Lying On A Bed With Attendants has its first public showing after 30 years hidden away in Iran
The Weekender

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A long-lost "major" work by Francis Bacon has returned to London after an extraordinary 30 years spent hidden in Iran.

The triptych, entitled Two Figures Lying On A Bed With Attendants, has never been seen publicly in London before today, when it is unveiled at Tate Britain.

The last time it was shown anywhere was at an exhibition in Dusseldorf in 1972. The Bacon, which would fetch over £5 million at auction, was painted in 1968. Its central panel shows two men naked on a bed, while the side panels show two lone figures.

It was sold in 1975, via a French art dealer to an Iranian art foundation funded by oil revenues and controlled by Farah Pahlavi, the widow of the last Shah of Iran. It was given to the collection of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, although given its slightly risqué nature it is thought that it was never exhibited.

In 1979, when the fundamentalist ayatollahs violently ousted the Shah, the painting - along with works by Henry Moore, Renoir, Picasso, Warhol, Dali and Picasso - was seized and placed in storage.

Its return is thanks to Tate Britain director Dr Stephen Deuchar, who paid a speculative visit to his Iranian counterpart, Dr Sami Azar, during a family holiday three years ago.

Dr Deuchar told the Standard: "I did know that they had a collection of American and European art, and I knew they had another work by Bacon which I had seen reproduced. But I was only dimly aware of this triptych. It was amazing to see this piece that had evidently been in storage for 30 years."

The Bacon, said Dr Deuchar, "was considered one of his most important works of the late 1960s. And it seems to us, as we introduce it to the Tate, to be a very powerful work indeed."

The painting is not back for good. The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art has loaned the work in what could prove the start of a fruitful friendship.

Relations between Britain and Iran have warmed considerably, and attitudes to works of art previously thought too risqué to show have shifted.

The Bacon will be part of a new Tate Britain display opening to the public on Saturday.

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