Frank Auerbach

Reclining Head of Julia

2018,

acrylic on board,

51 x 51 cm

‘Reclining Head of Julia’, painted in Auerbach‟s expressive, layered style represents the artist‟s wife, Julia Wolstenholme. It is characteristic of his psychologically charged portraits, in which he laboriously paints and repaints only a select group of favoured sitters with real intimacy: “I tend to try to paint things with which I have a great familiarity, partly because they mean more to me than anybody else”. As a key member of the School of London, alongside Lucian Freud, Leon Kossoff, RB Kitaj, Michael Andrews and Francis Bacon, Auerbach initiated the re-birth of British figurative art during the 1960s and 70s. At a time when Abstract Expressionism, Pop and Conceptual Art were calling for the end of easel painting, Auerbach explored the human form and revitalised portraiture with the distinctive expressionist manner, evident here.