Frank Auerbach
Selected Works, 1978-2016
New York, 531 West 24th Street
A solo exhibition of Frank Auerbach’s paintings and drawings that celebrates the mature career of a singular artist. Spanning from the late 1970s to recent works, the selection of his portraits and landscapes on view will underscore Auerbach’s great achievements in painting in the post-war era.
“I think all good paintings look as though the painting has escaped from the thicket of prepared positions and has entered some sort of freedom where it exists on its own, and by its own laws, and inexplicably has got free of all possible explanations.
– Frank Auerbach”
Auerbach’s work exists outside of any specific period or style. Employing an energetic impasto technique to render his subjects, he creates figurative paintings through an intensive daily regimen. The exhibition highlights portraits of a group of his devoted sitters, some of whom he has been painting since the 1970s and still pose for him regularly today. The paintings are often the result of months of labor: at the end of a day of work, he will frequently scrape down the entire surface of the piece in order to start anew in his next attempt; each rejected endeavor a pursuit toward the final expression. The landscape paintings are derived from sketches Auerbach makes in locations close to Mornington Crescent in Camden Town, London, the area near the studio where he has worked since 1954. With his distinct idiom Auerbach imagines the quotidian scenes of parks, streets, and buildings around his familiar neighborhood.
through February 20, 2021
