Frank Auerbach b.1931

Frank auerbach

Painter Frank Auerbach was born to Jewish parents in Berlin, Germany in 1931; his father was a lawyer and his mother a former art student. In 1939, at the age of eight, he was sent to England to escape . His parents, who remained behind, perished in the Holocaust. Auerbach spent his childhood at Bunce Court, a progressive boarding school in Kent for Jewish refugees, where he excelled not only in art but also in drama. In 1947 he was naturalised a British citizen and moved to London, deciding, at the age of 16, to become an artist. He attended painting classes at the Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute, going on to St Martin's School of Art, where he studied between 1948 and 1952, meeting fellow pupil Leon Kossoff in the Antique Room. Both subsequently attended David Bomberg's revolutionary life drawing evening classes at the Borough Polytechnic, an antidote to their more formal teaching, which continued at the Royal College of Art (1952-55). In 1954 Auerbach took over Kossoff's former Camden Town studio (previously occupied by German émigré artist and activist Gustav Metzger, who also studied with Bomberg), where he continues to live and work to this day.

In 1956, shortly after completing his studies, Auerbach was given his first solo exhibition at Beaux-Arts Gallery (his work was also exhibited at the Ben Uri Gallery, alongside other Jewish artists, in the same year). He continued to exhibit regularly at the Beaux-Arts until 1963, gaining a reputation as a young figurative painter of great power, and since 1965, he has been represented by the Marlborough Galleries in London. Early in his career, Auerbach also taught part-time in a variety of posts, including a day a week at a Sussex girls' school and Sidcup, Bromley and Camberwell Schools of Art. At the latter, he worked one day a week from 1958-65, providing 'the strongest antidote possible' to William Coldstream's mathematical system.

Auerbach is often associated with the circle of figurative painters including Michael Andrews, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and Leon Kossoff, famously referred to by R. B. Kitaj in 1976, as 'the School of London', although Auerbach has stated that he does not feel part of this or any group. Freud, one of Auerbach's closest friends and a collector of his work, bequeathed a collection of 45 Auerbach paintings and drawings to the nation, distributed to museums throughout the UK in 2011