Head I is a relatively small oil and tempera on hardboard painting by the Irish-born British figurative artist Francis Bacon.

Completed in 1948, it is the first in a series of six heads, the remainder of which were painted the following year in preparation for a November 1949 exhibition at the Hanover Gallery in London.

[4] In some passages he has rubbed or brushed out (perhaps with a cloth) the paint, a technique art historian Armin Zweite describes as "productive vandalism".

[4] The use of heavy impasto[7] gives the impression of animal skin; critic Robert Melville described the "color of wet, black snakes lightly powdered with dust".

[2] Bacon began the Head series out of necessity; he was granted the 1949 exhibition at the Hayward a year in advance, but had not painted at all in 1947, and had only a few works he was happy with from 1948.