Frank Auerbach - Notes and references

Artist, born in Berlin, Germany. He moved to Britain in 1939, and studied at St Martin's School of Art (1948–52) and the Royal College of Art (1952–5), and held his first one-man exhibition at London's Beaux Arts Gallery in 1956. He works generously with oil paint of predominantly earth colours. His subject matter is figurative, portraits of a few close friends, and familiar views of Primrose Hill and Camden Town in London. In 2001, to mark his 70th birthday, the Royal Academy staged a retrospective exhibition of his work.

Frank Helmut Auerbach (born April 29, 1931) is a German-born British painter.

Auerbach was born in Berlin, but his parents sent him to England in 1939 to escape the Nazis (the family was Jewish).

He studied art first at St Martin's School of Art in London and later at the Royal College of Art.

Auerbach is a figurative painter, usually taking personal friends as his subject, with three people being used time and again: his wife Julia;

Auerbach's work might broadly be called expressionist. In his building site pictures in particular, lines are sometimes defined not by their colour, but by a mark left by the stroke of Auerbach's painting-knife through thick paint.

A similarly sculptural aspect can often be found even in his drawings: Auerbach layers multiple sheets of paper as much as half an inch in thickness and in some parts of the drawing he may erase so heavily as to go through several sheets.

The first major retrospective of Auerbach's work was presented in 1978 by the Arts Council of Great Britain for the Hayward Gallery, London, and then toured to the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh. Other major shows have included "Frank Auerbach: Paintings and Drawings 1977–85" at the British Pavilion at the XLII Venice Biennale (1986), where he shared the Golden Lion prize with Sigmar Polke; "Frank Auerbach at the National Gallery: Working after the Masters" (1995), at the National Gallery, London, presented drawings made over a thirty-year period from paintings in the National Gallery's collection; Many of his works are in the permanent collection of the Tate Gallery.

Auerbach was among the several hundred individuals reported in December 2003 to have refused either knighthoods or other UK honours.

Notes and references

^ Auerbach Chronology, The Royal Academy of Arts.