Obituary Frank Auerbach: Master of psychologization

When Frank Auerbach, then 25 years old, opened his first solo exhibition in London in 1956, the audience reaction was mixed: the paint was too thick, restless and confusing. The critic David Sylvester, however, spoke of the “most exciting and impressive debut exhibition by an English painter since Francis Bacon”. The mere categorization as an “English painter” was remarkable. Frank Auerbach was born in Berlin in 1931 and came to England eight years later on the Kindertransport. Both parents were murdered in Auschwitz. He didn’t find out until decades later and “successfully suppressed the loss,” as he claimed in one of his extremely rare interviews.

Naturalized in 1947, he began his training in London a year later. He studied at St. Martin’s Art College until 1952 and then attended the Royal College of Art until 1955. During this time he also took over a studio in Camden Town from his friend Leon Kossoff. He kept the room, which was only ten by ten meters in size, for half a century and reportedly painted there as long as he could, seven days a week. Frank Auerbach had a reputation as “a painter’s painter”, i.e. as an artist who other artists particularly valued. This was particularly true for another Berlin native, Lucian Freud, with whom Auerbach had a long and close friendship. Stylistically they differed significantly, as Auerbach always moved on the edge of semi-abstraction. But the portraits of both thrive on their depth and a disinterest in conventional beauty.

His partner Stella West modeled for a single portrait for several years

Auerbach was an obsessive artist and his pace of work was notorious for its glacial slowness. His long-time partner Stella West modeled for a single portrait for several years. He repeatedly scraped off the paint and added a new layer, with almost sculptural results. Portraits and landscapes protrude from the canvas and yet dissolve in the color, the epitome of changeability and transience at the same time. Auerbach’s works were always the result of a meticulous psychologization of the world.

He loved North London, where fate had brought him, “as much as others love their pets” and very rarely left the area. Why? The intensive engagement with a single person or place was ultimately what artistic creation was all about for him. His goal remained until the end, to capture something “that had never been captured before,” as he once said. Frank Auerbach died on Monday at the age of 93.