FRANK AUERBACH

Biography

1931. Berlin. The year and place Frank Auerbach was born - a time when the popularity of the Nazi party was on the rise in Germany against a backdrop of uniform resentment at the austerity and unfairness of the Treaty of Versailles. By 1933 they were in power and Germany and the world would never be the same.

At the age of 8, in 1939, his Jewish parents sent him to Bunce Court school in Kent to avoid the political situation in Germany on the eve of the 2nd World War. That was the last contact he had with them.

Why did his parents not follow him to the UK? According to Auerbach, they thought that nothing would come of the Nazi party, that it was all talk and rhetoric. They were 'rather elderly parents' when they had him and maybe were set in their ways and views. But it didn't and the story of his parents is yet another tragic story in a cast of millions.

Early Years & Training

At Bunce Court he discovered a black & white reproduction of Turner's the Fighting Temeraire. He became aware of Michelangelo and Breughel, community spirit and the normality of art.

After the 2nd World War he acted in small parts in several London theatres and in 1947 attended painting classes at the Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute. The following year he attended the Borough Polytechnic Institute before entering St. Martin's School of Art, where he met Leon Kossoff and Phil Holmes.

In 1952 Auerbach studied at the Royal College of Art with Joe Tilson, Bridget Riley and Leon Kossoff after being judged unfit for military service.

Frank Auerbach
Photo © Ken Garland

Frank and Julia Auerbach, 2005
From Marlborough's Frank Auerbach - Recent Works

The Camden Studio

In 1954 he acquired Gustav Metzger's former studio in Camden, London. It was run down with an outside loo and riddled with damp. But it was all he could afford and out of sheer economic need he stayed there. For over 50 years he remained there and though it has been rebuilt and he is now well off, that feeling of sheer economic need stayed with him.

He continued participating in David Bomberg's drawing classes at the Borough throughout 1954. The following year he left the Royal College with a silver medal and first-class honors.

Career Highlights

1956 saw his first one-man show at the Beaux Arts Gallery. Around this time he began painting a series of building sites and Julia Yardley Mills (JYM) began to model for portraits. In 1958 he married Julia Wolstenholme. Son Jacob was born.

At the beginning of the 60s, Auerbach began studies of great works of art, which included Rembrandt's Deposition and Titian's Tarquin and Lucretia. In 1966, he began a series focused on Camden Palace Theatre.

1978 saw his first retrospective by the Arts Council of Great Britain for Hayward Gallery, London. In 1981 his work was shown at the New Spirit in Painting show at the Royal Academy, London. Five years later, he was chosen for the British Pavilion at the XLII Venice Biennale. Won the Golden Lion Prize with Sigmar Polke.

In 1995, the National Gallery exhibition Working After the Masters focused on Auerbach's studies of works in the gallery over a 30-year period. 2000 and the newly-opened Tate Modern displayed a room of his pictures.

2001, and to mark the artist's 71st year, the Royal Academy had a retrospective exhibition of his work.