Oliver Plehn - Francis Bacon

Portrait of the British painter Francis Bacon. Charcoal, gouache, and oil on a 100cm x 100cm canvas dating from 2025. Signed by a black labeler in the bottom right. Comes with a certificate of authenticity, in very good condition, except for a small tear in the canvas (see image). It has a fabric patch on the back. The work is shipped rolled inside a tube.

Artist Biography – Oliver Plehn
The work of the German painter and draftsman Oliver Plehn is characterized by expressive representations of the human body and animals. Faces and bodies form the center of his artistic universe: powerful, sensitive, and filled with psychological depth. Since childhood, images of German Expressionists influenced him, whose emotional immediacy and formal freedom remain a reference in his artistic language to this day.
From a young age, Plehn decided to be an artist and to maintain his creative independence. In addition to studying painting and drawing in art schools, he studied in natural sciences, which gave him professional independence and artistic freedom. At the beginning of the 1990s, a grant in the field of quantum mechanics brought him to Madrid.
Oliver Plehn lives with his wife and two daughters in the Madrid neighborhood of Carabanchel Alto.
Artistic Statement
My work arises from the impulse to understand human existence at its deepest and most contradictory interior. Throughout my career, I have explored portraiture as a medium not only to reveal the visible but also the hidden: repressed emotions, scars of the soul, gestures of silent resistance. I paint from fragility, from that liminal space where pain and beauty coexist without permission.
I am not interested in capturing perfect faces, but presence, that which speaks of what remains unspoken. I am drawn to silences, looks that carry stories, bodies that vibrate with lived experience. Each work is, for me, an attempt at dialogue with the unknown, that inner territory we often try to escape from.
My goal as an artist is to create images that are not only observed but questioned by the viewer. I want them to act as mirrors in which one can find something of oneself, even in restlessness or discomfort. I work figuratively, yes, but I seek in it an openness to mystery, to doubt, to the emotion that cannot be put into words.
I feel that art has the power to heal, to reveal, and to accompany. In this sense, my practice is also a form of care: for myself and for all those who approach these images with an open heart.
Exhibitions
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Online presence on Artsy
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Online presence on Flecha.es
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Online presence on 1819 Art Gallery
•“Aqua versus Terra,” September 1–30, 2025, Madrid
•“Madrid Oculto,” June 1–July 15, 2025, Madrid
•“The Gods of Muay Thai and a Strange One,” December 1, 2022 – January 6, 2023, Madrid
• Exhibition at Yale School of Art, March 2021
• Solo exhibition at Madrid-Barajas Adolfo Suárez Airport, “Faces of the World,” December 30, 2019 – February 7, 2020
• Solo exhibition “The Passion of the Christ” at Friedenskirche German church, 6 Serrano Street, Madrid
• Exhibition at United Artist Fair 2019 at the Casa de Cantabria, Madrid, February 2019
• Exhibition of paintings on Calle Serrano, Madrid, December 2018 – February 2019
• Solo painting exhibition in Madrid, Spain, November 2018
• Painting exhibition in Madrid, Spain, Calle Serrano, November 2016 – January 2017