Step into the worlds of Francis Bacon and Auguste Rodin, two artists whose visions reshaped our understanding of the human condition. Their works, though separated by time and medium, share a profound fascination with emotion, vulnerability, and the physicality of existence. Executed in Paris in 1975, Francis Bacon’s Portrait of a Dwarf stands as a singular work in his career. Painted four years after the death of George Dyer, it channels the spirit of Velázquez to create a haunting meditation on identity and loss. The figure — a fusion of Dyer, Peter Beard, Lucian Freud, and Bacon himself — confronts the viewer directly, compressed within a stark, vertical frame that amplifies its raw psychological charge. In Study for Self-Portrait (1980), Bacon turns that same unflinching gaze upon himself. A translucent blue haze softens his features, transforming memory and time into something physical. The result is both elegiac and defiant — a late master reflecting on the passing of youth wit...