Frank Auerbach

The man himself...

A couple of weeks ago I watched a documentary on the artist Frank Auerbach in my Critical and Contextual Studies class, and it made me look at the life of a painter in a new way.  Auerbach is consumed by his art, he lives it and breathes it.  It seems that nothing else is as important to him.  His paintings are rich and sumptous and covered in layers and layers of paint.  Often it is difficult to make out the figures, to understand them.  His objective is to capture the essence of a person.  And he himself is certainly an interesting one.

Here are some examples of his work, work which often takes him years to complete (as he would continuely work over his pieces, never truely happy with how he had captured his models):

Head Of Leon Kossoff, 1957
charcoal and chalk on paper



E.O.W. on the Bed at Earl's Court, 1959
charcoal and chalk on paper



...and working with paint

Clip from the documentary 'Frank Auerbach : To the Studio'