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Family and friends - Frank Auerbach
One of Britain's preeminent post-war painters, Frank Auerbach was born in Berlin, Germany in 1931 and arrived in England as a Jewish refugee in 1939. He attended St Martin's School of Art from 1948 to 1952, and subsequently joined the Royal College of Art, where he and Keith Cunningham met.
Best known for his depictions of the streets of London and for portraits of friends, family and lovers, Auerbach transforms paint into a thick substance, so heavy it could sometime slide off the canvas. Despite such formal abstraction, his subjects retain a unique, almost intuitive presence, conveyed through a vibrant application of colour. Over his 60-year long career, his works have become some of the most internationally collected of living artists.
In 2016 he attended the exhibition of Cunningham’s work organised by his wife Bobby Hillson, writing a letter in which he recalled their years together at the RCA:
"‘We entered the RCA at the same time in 1952. At the end of the first year there was a sort of examination, and six students were weeded out. Six paintings were required, but Keith entered some drawings of donkeys with human feet and a very thickly painted bearded figure (possibly an apostle or prophet) raising a hand and levitating. When asked where his six paintings were, he said they were under the thickly painted prophet. The college staff (very sensibly) kept him on.’"
Auerbach also recalled Cunningham’s peculiar process:
"‘He kept a little room on the Brompton Road, looked into the college to look at the model, then sprinted to his room to paint the model he had seen from memory. After two years, at the final examination he showed the paintings produced in this way. They looked very distinguished to me, full of nervous life.’"