Frank Auerbach, Reclining Head of Julia, (2015). PHOTO: MARK DALTON, LONDON; COURTESY THE ARTIST, FRANKIE ROSSI ART PROJECTS AND LUHRING AUGUSTINE
2. Frank Auerbach at Luhring Augustine, New York
One of the leading artists of the London School (a post-war movement of a loose figurative form of realism, which included Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud and Leon Kossoff), Frank Auerbach is best known for his thickly painted portraits of people and city scenes. Born in Germany in 1931, he was sent to England in 1939 by his parents, who perished in a concentration camp. Representing Great Britain at the 1986 Venice Biennale, he shared the Golden Lion Prize with Sigmar Polke. In that solo show, Auerbach—acclaimed as a painter’s painter—presented paintings and drawings, which is what’s on view in the selection of works from the past decade in the exhibition “Frank & Julia” at the gallery.
Offering six small-scale paintings on board and three slightly larger drawings of himself that were made over the past year paired with six intimate portraits of his wife Julia’s head in a reclining position painted between 2012 and 2020, the engaging exhibition presents a compelling look at a 70-year love affair and the 92-year-old artist’s fascinating style of composition. Painted with a buildup of brushwork that’s applied, scraped off and applied again and drawn with a well-chosen accumulation of graphite, ink and chalk lines, his portraits seem almost sculptural while capturing the subject’s shadowy likeness with just the right number of marks. Obsessed with specific subjects, he returns to them repeatedly, but with different results each time.
Through December 22
Read full list at galeriemagazine.com
