Frank Auerbach

Frank Auerbach (1931-2024) 

Frank Auerbach was one of the greatest painters working in post-war Britain. He moved to Britain from Germany as a schoolboy immediately before the outbreak of the Second World War, and subsequently settled. Though he received his formal training at the Royal College of Art, along with his friend and contemporary Leon Kossoff, he was profoundly influenced by the teaching of David Bomberg. Both Auerbach and Kossoff attended Bomberg's evening classes at the Borough Polytechnic between 1950 and 1954.

His first solo exhibitions were held at Helen Lessore's Beaux Arts Gallery, a dynamic if economically unsound enterprise which eventually closed in 1965. Auerbach subsequently went on to exhibit with Marlborough Fine Art, where he was in the company of his close friend Lucian Freud. Like Freud, Auerbach was noted for his exacting technique, a habit of scraping away the paint, the intensive scrutiny of his sitters, and a regular pattern of work. It is often remarked that he did not take holidays, preferring to work all year round, thus imposing on his regular sitters - including Catherine Lampert, William Feaver and his son, Jake - an austere programme of modelling.