Francis Bacon: The Human Body — Exhibition Guide, Hayward Gallery, London, 1998

Exhibition guide / folded gallery pamphlet
Hayward Gallery, London
5 February – 5 April 1998

Offset print on folded paper stock
Approx. 21 × 21 cm folded; 19.5 × 21 cm unfolded
Designed by Peter Campbell; text by David Sylvester
Published by the Hayward Gallery / South Bank Centre

Condition: good vintage condition. Light age toning, handling marks, soft creasing along fold lines, and minor surface wear.

Issued for Francis Bacon: The Human Body at the Hayward Gallery, London, curated by David Sylvester — Bacon’s most significant critic, collaborator, and biographer. The guide condenses the exhibition into a portable structure: essay, checklist, institutional information, and typographic cover assembled into a single folded support.

The exhibition arrived six years after Bacon’s death and focused on the body as the central subject of his practice. Sylvester’s text positions Bacon not as a painter of distortion alone but as an artist concerned with flesh, sensation, movement, and the unstable boundary between the human figure and its surroundings. The guide reproduces this argument in miniature. The exhibition becomes paper. The curatorial thesis becomes a fold.

The cover is notable for its restraint: large typography replaces imagery, allowing Bacon’s name itself to function as image. A temporary support designed for movement through the gallery, preserved beyond its intended duration. A document of reception as much as a document of exhibition.

Shipping and handling included.