Modern painters

Probably the most famous African-American visual artist of the 20th century, Romare Bearden was best known for a singular approach to collage art that incorporated scraps of wallpaper, glossy magazines, and fabric into a kind of patchwork cubism.

In July we lost one of the great American painters – Cy Twombly, who was 83. Twombly defied categories. Unlike the abstract painters of the previous generation, like Pollock and DeKooning, Twombly’s work was playful, and frequently baffled critics.

A cubist portrait called “Buste de Femme” is creating buzz in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

The Francis Bacon exhibit at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art serves up depictions of carcasses, sex, and a psychologically tortured pope. They’re brutal, but impossible to ignore. Painter Jenny Saville explains why younger artists are so influenced by Bacon, and how he helped save painting from irrelevance. Produced by Sarah Lilley.