The passing of Frank Auerbach, one of Britain’s greatest modern painters, has left the art world reflecting on a life marked by tragedy, resilience, and an uncompromising devotion to capturing the raw essence of humanity on canvas. Born in Berlin in 1931, Auerbach was sent to England as a child to escape the horrors of the Holocaust, which claimed the lives of his parents. This early trauma would forever shape his artistic vision, imbuing his works with a palpable sense of grief, passion, and the indomitable will to survive.
A Painter of Wounds and Renewal
Auerbach’s early paintings, created in the late 1950s and early 60s amidst the rebuilding of postwar London, stand as harrowing testaments to the scars left by the war. Rather than celebrating the city’s renewal, he chose to depict the gaping voids and skeletal structures of bombsites, as if unearthing the wounds that lay beneath the surface. His building site scenes, with their lattices of girders and cavernous spaces, border on abstraction yet remain tethered to reality through the artist’s sheer force of will.
Auerbach painted faces, or as he titled them “Heads”, as if fumbling for their essence. To pose for Auerbach was to lend yourself as a near-anonymous icon of the human presence.
– Art critic Jonathan Jones
Portraits of Survival
In his portraits, Auerbach grappled with the very nature of human representation in the aftermath of atrocity. His early depictions of people, like the haunting EOW Nude from 1953-54, appear ravaged and spectral, as if risen from the ashes. Later works, like Head of EOW I from 1960, introduce bold colors that slice through the thick impasto like open wounds, the features of the sitter carved out of the paint as if by an act of excavation.
These were not mere likenesses but profound reckonings with the resilience of the human face and spirit. As Auerbach’s friend, the artist R.B. Kitaj, once observed: “Frank has mixed feelings about survival, which is why his people sometimes look devastated, and at other times, they look like they’ll get through.”
Landscapes of the Soul
In his later career, Auerbach found a measure of solace in the landscapes of London’s parks and his own neighborhood streets. His renderings of Primrose Hill and Mornington Crescent pulse with the energy of the natural world, the thick, gestural brushstrokes evoking the turbulent skies of Constable. Yet even in these works, one senses the weight of history and the shadows of the past.
As Auerbach himself once reflected: “You’ve got to find a way of making paintings that live now and that are about this specific present in which you find yourself. And yet, inevitably, they are going to include experience that you’ve had in the past.”
A Legacy of Uncompromising Vision
Until the very end of his life, Auerbach remained committed to his singular artistic vision. He continued painting self-portraits into his 90s, unflinching in his examination of his own visage as he grappled with mortality. As one commentator noted at a recent book launch the artist was slated to attend: “Frank can’t be here; he’s working.”
In the wake of his passing, the art world mourns the loss of a giant while celebrating the extraordinary gift of his life and work. Auerbach’s canvases stand as enduring testaments to the indomitable human spirit, to the transformative power of art in the face of unimaginable adversity. Through his fearless confrontation with the scars of history and his unwavering commitment to the expressive potential of paint, he forged a language of survival that will continue to reverberate through the ages.
I like to think Auerbach hasn’t gone; he’s painting.
– Art critic Jonathan Jones
As we reflect on the legacy of this towering figure, we are reminded of the enduring power of art to bear witness, to heal, and to affirm the resilience of the human spirit in the face of even the darkest chapters of our history. Frank Auerbach’s paintings will forever stand as monuments to the triumph of creativity over destruction, of love over loss, and of the unquenchable human will to find beauty and meaning in a fragmented world.
