Frank Auerbach German-born British, 1931-2024

Frank Auerbach, born in Berlin in 1931, is renowned for his intensive approach to painting, meticulously layering, scraping, and moulding layers of paint to his highly impastoed surfaces until the final image emerges. Working on serial subject matter, including portraiture and views from his North London studio, Auerbach’s synthesis of realism and abstraction revolutionised painting, capturing the cultural malaise and melancholia of post-World War II Britain. Charged with emotional depth and psychological tension, Auerbach’s work interlaces the personal and political, the self and the familial, the artist and the subject.

Born to Jewish parents and sent to England in 1939 to escape Nazism, Auerbach attended St Martin’s School of Art in London from 1948 to 1952 and took night classes at Borough Polytechnic. He went on to study at the Royal College of Art in London from 1952 to 1955. In 1986 Auerbach represented Great Britain at the XLII Venice Biennale, for which he was awarded the Golden Lion Prize. He has been the subject of solo shows at The Hayward Gallery, London; Kunstverein, Hamburg; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Saint Louis Art Museum, Missouri; Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven; The National Gallery, London; Royal Academy of Arts, London; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; and The Courtauld Gallery, London. Auerbach’s works are included in prestigious collections worldwide including the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo; British Museum, London; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; The National Gallery, London; National Portrait Gallery, London; and Tate, London.