Frank Auerbach, the German-British artist known for his vibrant impasto portraits and cityscapes, died on November 11 in London at age 93. A leading figurative painter of the postwar period, Auerbach cofounded the School of London movement, which united like-minded artists against the rise of abstraction and conceptualism.
Who Was Frank Auerbach?
Frank Auerbach was born in 1931 in Berlin, Germany. When he was eight years old, Auerbach was sent to an English boarding school to escape the Nazi persecution of Jews in his home country. His parents stayed behind in Germany and were later killed in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Auerbach remained in England and later attended art schools in London. There, he drew and painted portraits of people and scenes of streets in and around his Camden Town neighborhood for 70 years. Auerbach gravitated towards the same few subjects, developing long and intimate relationships with particular people and places. In a 2001 interview, Auerbach explained, “If you pass something every day and it has a little character, it begins to intrigue you.”
While studying and later teaching art in London, Auerbach made friends with fellow figurative artists, including Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon. While minimalism, conceptualism, and abstraction dominated the postwar art world, these painters remained committed to creating figurative art. Frank Auerbach, in particular, would repeatedly apply and remove thick layers of pigment or charcoal until an expressive portrait or evocative cityscape emerged from the chaos.
Auerbach and the School of London
Together, Frank Auerbach and his peers formed a loosely defined art movement known as the School of London. The term “School of London” was coined in a 1976 London exhibition catalog, in which American artist R.B. Kitaj wrote, “There are artistic personalities in this small island more unique and strong and I think more numerous than anywhere in the world outside America’s jolting artistic vigour….In fact I think there is a substantial School of London.”
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The School of London did not explicitly define what figurative painting ought to look like in the 20th century. Instead, artists associated with the movement embraced a variety of techniques—from the meticulous draughtsmanship of David Hockney to the frenetic and sculpturesque brushwork of Frank Auerbach. What brought these London artists together was not a specific style but rather a mutual desire to further the tradition of figurative painting in a cultural climate that increasingly rejected it.
The Artistic Legacy of Frank Auerbach
Frank Auerbach famously dedicated himself to painting 364 days a year and kept the same Camden Town studio for half a century. In a 2023 interview with The Guardian, Auerbach, then aged 92, said, “I’ll die with a brush in my hand.” Auerbach’s personalized impasto approach to portraits and cityscapes, as well as his refusal to blindly follow art world trends, characterized his 70-year career and lasting creative influence.
Auerbach’s representative gallery, Frankie Rossi Art Projects in London, confirmed the artist’s death on Monday, November 11. In a statement, gallery director Geoffrey Parton said, “We have lost a dear friend and remarkable artist but take comfort knowing his voice will resonate for generations to come.”
