The retrospective organized by the Tate Britain Gallery was inaugurated on September 11 and will remain open until January 2009. It includes nearly 70 works that span close to half a century of creative endeavor by this Irish artist. The works show strong images dealing with sex, solitude, and death, themes that obsessed Bacon all of his life. The exhibit is divided into eight periods, in addition to another entire exhibition room dedicated to Bacon¿s Crucifixions and yet another salon dedicated to George Dyer, who was Bacon¿s great love from the mid-1960s until his suicide in a Paris hotel in 1971, two days prior to the opening of a large retrospective by the artist in the French capital. Among the mythic works that can be seen at this exhibit are the Study from Portrait of Pope Innocent X, by Velázquez, of 1965, which Bacon distorted until transforming it into an iconic image of extreme radical isolation and desperation, and Triptych of 1976, a work auctioned at Sotheby¿s for 86.2 million dollars in May of this year. The painting consists of three large-format panels that include elements of the Greek legend of Prometheus. This retrospective of Francis Bacon is the first held in Great Britain in 23 years on the artist. It will travel to the Prado Museum in Madrid in February 2009.