Showcasing two of the 20th century’s greatest figurative painters, the Albertina juxtaposes the work of Pablo Picasso and Francis Bacon in this exhibition. Bacon was inspired to become a painter by Picasso’s works and then strove not only to compete with him professionally, but to surpass him and his legacy. Picasso himself was not inspired by Bacon’s work, but he did follow Bacon’s career very closely. Both artists used the distortion of the human figure to evoke and examine the darker range of human emotion. Approximately 70 works from international museums and private collections in this exhibition confront the similarities between these two great artists who aimed to scrutinise the modern soul, and demonstrates Picasso’s influence on subsequent generations of artists.