Auerbach, Frank -1990 Head of Julia II (original) (raw)

Frank Helmut Auerbach is a German-born British painter. Auerbach was born in Berlin. His parents sent him to England in 1939 to escape the Nazis as part of the Kindertransport programme. The family was jewish; his parents subsequently died in a concentration camp).

Auerbach does not prepare underpaintings, nor does he use outline sketches for portraits. In contrast, he sketches landscapes in the field and brings the sketches back to the studio, sometimes using as many as 200 sketches for a single painting.

His work might broadly be described as expressionist. Many of his paintings display an extremely thick impasto, something which he was criticized for at his 1956 Beaux Arts solo show. The impasto, which grew even heavier over the next decade is sometimes so heavy that the paint seems to have been sculpted rather than brushed on.