SP 4868
FRANK AUERBACH
b. Berlin 1931
Head of Catherine Lampert
Canvas: 19 ¾ x 22 1/8 in / 50.2 x 56.2 cm
Framed size: 27 ½ x 29 ¼ in / 69.8 x 74.3 cm
In its original frame
Painted in 2003 - 2004
Provenance:
Marlborough Fine Art, London (308842)
Private collection, acquired directly from the above in 2004
Literature:
William Feaver, Frank Auerbach, Rizzoli, New York, 2009, no. 875, illustrated in colour
A passionate portrait painter Frank Auerbach considers that when painting a portrait an artist should be absorbed by his sitter in the same way that an actor becomes immersed in a character in a play. ‘The great thing was to simply summon up for one moment a living breathing shape, to make the dead walk again, to make the reader see a figure and hear a voice’ (Frank Auerbach: Paintings and Drawings 1954-2001, Catherine Lampert, Norman Rosenthal and Isabel Carlisle, exhibition catalogue, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2001, p 20).
Portraits form and important part of Auerbach’s oeuvre, accounting for approximately two thirds of his small annual output of between 12 and 15 paintings each year. Catherine Lampert, the sitter in the present painting, has described the artist’s depictions of people as an attempt, ‘to celebrate life through the energy specific to all individuals through their changing moods and to fuse those energies with his own furious energy during the painting’s execution.’ (Catherine Lampert, op. cit.)
Auerbach selects his sitters entirely from his family and friends and does not accept portrait commissions. Although he strives to create a true likeness, his subjects may not always be immediately recognizable by their individual features, his aim is to infuse his paintings with an energy and vitality that captures very essence of the sitter.
Catherine Lampert first met Auerbach when she was curating the 1978 exhibition of his work at the Hayward Gallery in London and also curated the exhibition of Auerbach’s work at the Royal Academy in 2001. She has now been sitting for his portraits for over thirty years, visiting his Camden studio for two hours at a time seated in the same wing back chair for each portrait. In a recent interview she described at first had the unique experience of sitting for such an energetic
artist. ‘Auerbach is always moving, looking, rapidly building an image with soft paint scooped and squeezed from pots and tubes, wiping it off of newspaper and becoming covered in the medium’. In her introduction to the exhibition catalogue of Auerbach’s exhibition at the XLII Venice Beinnale in 1986 Lampert also wrote ‘Auerbach moves noisily around the room, looks at the painting in the mirror, turns the canvas, stands back and then rushes up, and like darts or writing on the blackboard fairly brutally tries the next throw or cancels the previous one. He is continuously active, drawing in the air, talking to himself, hardly pausing, much less contemplating in the usual sense of the word.’
FRANK AUERBACH
b. Berlin 1931
Frank Helmut Auerbach was born on the 29th April 1931, to Max Auerbach and Charlotte Nora Burchardt. In 1939 Auerbach was sent to school in England with five other children, sponsored by the writer Iris Origo. After boarding the ship in Hamburg, he never saw his parents again. The school, Bunce Court at Lenham, near Faversham, Kent, was evacuated to Shropshire from 1940-45. Having left school with a Higher School Certificate in 1947, Auerbach acted in plays at the Tavistock, Torch, Twentieth Century and Unity Theatres where he met Estella West. He also attended painting classes at the Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute. In 1948 Auerbach enrolled at the Borough Polytechnic Institute, where he studied for two terms before starting at St. Martin’s School of Art, in September, where he met Leon Kossoff and Phil Holmes. He continued to go to drawing classes at the Borough Polytechnic, taught by David Bomberg, two evenings a week throughout 1954.
Declared unfit for the army, Auerbach continued his studies at the Royal College of Art from 1952-55. In 1954 he moved to Kossoff’s studio in Camden until his marriage to Julia Wolstenholme, another student of the Royal College, in 1958. Auerbach left the Royal College in 1955 with a silver medal and first-class honours. He exhibited at the Beaux Arts Gallery summer exhibition and then held a one-man show there in 1956. He taught in secondary schools and then at various art colleges, including Camberwell and the Slade, one day a week until 1968. Auerbach first exhibited at Marlborough Fine Art, London in 1965 and has continued to show at its associated galleries.
In 1978 the Arts Council of Britain held the first retrospective of Auerbach’s work at the Hayward Gallery. ‘Frank Auerbach. Paintings and Drawings 1977-85’ was held in the British Pavilion at the XLII Venice Biennale, June-September 1986. He was awarded the Golden Lion prize along with Sigmar Polke. In 1990 Robert Hughes published his monograph on the artist. In 1995 an exhibition based on drawings made from works in the National Gallery’s collection was presented, entitled ‘Frank Auerbach at the National Gallery: Working after the Master’s. In 2001 an exhibition of Auerbach’s paintings and drawings from 1954-2001 was held at the Royal Academy, London.
The artist lives and works in London