FRANK AUERBACH
The paintings of Frank Auerbach (born 1931) are distinguished by their thick, viscous texture and vigorously expressive technique. Heavily laden brushfuls of paint are dragged in violent swirls across the picture surface, from which recognisable facial and bodily features or landscapes emerge. Auerbach manipulates the molten build-up of paint with such rapid and varied approaches, which is indicative of his restless search for new images from familiar subjects.
From the 1950s Auerbach focused on portraits and city scenes in and around Camden Town, London, where he lives and works. His paintings, in particular those of building sites, bear witness to the reconstruction of the city in the wake of the war, during which large areas had been levelled by bombing. The heavy conglomeration of paint and obscure, contorted forms in Auerbach’s works evoke the grittiness and melancholy of London’s inner city and the social degradation prevalent at the time.
Auerbach’s work is characteristic of the School of London with which he is associated – a loose grouping of figurative painters working in London during the 1980s who chose mainly domestic or local subjects. Others members include R. B. Kitaj, who coined the name for the group, Francis Bacon and Leon Kossoff. Born in Berlin to Jewish parents, Auerbach was sent to England as a child to escape the Nazis in Germany. He studied under David Bomberg together with Kossoff, who became a close friend and left him his studio in 1954, where Auerbach has worked with great discipline and regularity ever since. He represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1986, showing the close attachment he developed to his new home country.