BUFFALO — During the 1950s, painter Francis Bacon began to formulate the iconography of his dark and troubled world in paint. The exhibition, Francis Bacon: Paintings from the 1950s, on view at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery May 4 - July 29, 2007, features nearly 50 paintings from the period in which Bacon was at the height of his creative powers. In this intensely fertile time, many of Bacon's themes–screaming popes, howling dogs, and haunting figures trapped in tortured isolation–began to materialize as the man himself was becoming one of the most significant artists of the twentieth century.

Francis Bacon: Paintings from the 1950s takes a profoundly personal look at this fascinating period in Bacon's career and is the first exhibition to examine Bacon's formative works. Organized by Michael Peppiatt, a close friend of Bacon's, the exhibition provides a first-person perspective on the artist's emerging style in the first decades of his career through paintings, drawings, and a selection of archival materials that illustrate the artist's life and work.

The show is built around 13 paintings from the collection of Sir Robert and Lisa Sainsbury, collectors, patrons and friends of the artist. At the heart of the current exhibition of some 48 works are 13 paintings collected by Bacon's patrons, Sir Robert and Lady Lisa Sainsbury, including three portraits Bacon made using her as a live model, a practice he otherwise loathed, preferring to work from photographs. The works include loans from public and private collections across the world, a number of which have rarely been seen in public.

"There was nothing Bacon enjoyed so much and handled so well," writes his friend, biographer and the exhibition's curator, Michael Peppiatt, "as leaving a gang of toughs he had got drunk with in an East End pub to have tea in a Knightsbridge drawing room or dinner with collectors at the Ritz."

The suite of Sainsbury portraits – the painter destroyed five others he made of her – constitute one of the several surprises that come with a show that still delivers all of the expected shock and horror, raw meat and screaming face moments that draw crowds to Bacon's work.

The Sainsbury portraits, plus the pair of extraordinary lesser-known works, "Man in Blue II" (1954) and "Man in Blue VI" (1954), distinguish this show from others shown over the years.

Any exhibition of Bacon's work would be hard pressed to closet the fact that Bacon was a very openly gay and somewhat promiscuous artist. The exhibits organizers do not disappoint, the brochure that accompanies the show includes Bacon's same-sex relationships and their influence on his art. Sexuality and painting were always the cornerstone of Bacon's existence. He always knew that he was gay, worked as a rent boy after being kicked out of the house by his father.

One episode recounted in the exhibits' brochure recounts a time when Bacon was living in Tangiers with his then lover, Peter Lacy . British authorities, alarmed by Lacy's regular beatings of Bacon, asked the local police to intervene. After investigating, police reported that there was nothing that they could do because "Mr. Bacon likes it".

The 1988 movie, Love is the Devil focuses on his stormy relationship with George Dyer, a common thief who became his consort and his most frequent model.

Bacon did seemingly settle down at the end of his life with John Edwards a much younger man who would be Bacon's last love and sole heir. The Exhibit includes the 1984 series of paintings, Three studies for portrait of John Edwards. They stand to in a stark contrast of how Bacon's art had changed from the themes and darkness that marked his art in the 1950's

The show will include works by Bacon from collections around the world, including the Albright-Knox's own "Man With Dog," 1954, a painting packed with intimations of savagery and violence. Through Sunday, July 29. $10.   —Tim Moran