Master of Psychological Realism Frank Auerbach Dies at 93

Frank Auerbach, the highly influential British artist who became one of the leading names among the London School painters with his impressive, dark, semi-figurative paintings, has died at the age of 93.

Although known as a reclusive man, Auerbach is known for his association with a wider group of London-based figurative painters, all of whom are internationally renowned. David Hockney, Francis Bacon and Lucian Freudespecially someone he is close to.

There were several subjects that Auerbach addressed repeatedly in his paintings; these included portraits of the London borough of Camden, where she lived, and her “heads”, a small circle of her preferred sitters, including her friend Estella Olive West and the professional model Julia Yardley Mills. and his wife Julia. Abandoning straightforward naturalism in favor of a deeper psychological realism, Auerbach’s distinctive style emerged from working denser layers of paint on the canvas until his works acquired a tangible vividness.

He once said: “As soon as I become consciously aware of what the paint is doing, my interest in painting weakens.” “Paint is most meaningful when it is a byproduct of a bodily, spatial, evolving creative concept, a creative identification with the subject.”

Engraving Leon Kossoff1980 by Frank Auerbach, photographed 1984. Photo: Ross Anthony Willis/Fairfax Media via Getty Images

Auerbach was born to Jewish parents in Berlin on April 29, 1931; His father was a lawyer and his mother was an artist. In 1939, when he was just seven years old, Auerbach fled Germany to the United Kingdom via the Kindertransport scheme, leaving behind his parents, who were both killed at Auschwitz in 1942. He became a naturalized British citizen in 1947.

Educated at a boarding school for orphans in Britain, Auerbach showed an interest in art at an early age, and after a brief interest in acting, he enrolled at St Martin’s School of Art and later the Royal College of Art, graduating from there in 1955. The initial motivation to become an artist was “the fear of having to work in a bank or office, the desire for a free and creative life.”

In the early 1960s he was teaching at Camberwell School of Art, where he was known as a generous mentor to young painters and showed promise.

At the same time, Auerbach was establishing himself in the mid-century London art scene, an enclave for figuration enthusiasts at a time when global attention was on New York and Abstract Expressionism. Auerbach held regular solo exhibitions at the Beaux Arts Gallery from 1956; ten years later he moved to Marlborough Fine Art, which gave him his first New York exhibition in 1969.

Describing his process, Auerbach said he would begin his days drawing, then switch between painting and drawing when dealing with large-scale landscapes. For the smaller “heads” he would work directly on the canvas, scraping and reapplying paint over and over until he achieved the effect he was looking for.

“Every painting has its own history,” he once said. “The only constant is that it always takes a long time, sometimes a very long time…”

A gallery staff member looks at a painting by Frank Auerbach, JYM Seated II, 1992, at Christie’s in London on October 6, 2023. Photo: Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing via Getty Images

Since Auerbach had his first solo museum exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in 1978, he has been the subject of too many international institutional exhibitions to list. Highlights include winning the Golden Lion (with Sigmar Polke) for the Great Britain pavilion at the 42nd Venice Biennale in 1986 and performing at the Reina Sofia in Madrid (1987), the National Gallery in London (1994). There are major retrospectives. Tate Britain in London and Kunstmuseum Bonn (2015).

Earlier this year, his highly sensitive yet haunting portrait drawings became the talk of magazines. “Frank Auerbach: Coalheads” At the Courtauld Gallery in London.

In his final years, Auerbach turned his attention to himself and produced a remarkable series of self-portraits. To talk Guard But last year, he reflected on the decades of portraying those close to him. “It’s probably true that our deepest experiences are with other people,” he said, “and it seems that the only things worth using for one’s art are one’s deepest experiences.”

Auerbach had always worked very long hours, seven days a week, and his obsessive nature became more intense as he got older. “Sometimes I keep drawing in my sleep,” he said last year. “I wasn’t very conscious of my dreams before, but now I find myself working on things and thinking I should do this with that.”

“We have lost a dear friend and a remarkable artist, but we take comfort in knowing that his voice will echo for generations to come,” said Geoffrey Parton, director of Frankie Rossi Arts Projects. Auerbach’s son, film producer Jacob, survives.