“Conversations” devotes two floors of the Marlborough gallery to the work of Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon, placing work from the two 20th century giants next to each other. The gallery, which has long represented them both, has carefully selected prints and color lithographs from their archive-some never before seen.

The title suggests a dialogue, and the results are electrifying. The men were lifelong friends and rivals during London’s golden age of painting, and the resonances between them are fascinating, pitting Bacon’s brutal and blurred surrealism against Freud’s tortured but earthy mannerism. To see how each artist treats the figure, Freud with fleshy weight and Bacon with smeared violence, is eye opening.