Lucian Freud

Lucian Freud

The grandson of Sigmund Freud, Lucian Freud was born in Berlin and came to England in 1932. He studied at Central School of Art, Goldsmith's College and at the small art school run by Cedric Morris in Suffolk. His early works were painted with a meticulous intensity, already displaying the harsh and penetrating observation that led Herbert Read to characterize him as the 'Ingres of Existentialism'. In the late fifties, he changes from sable to hog-hair brushed, and this 'miniaturist' style gave way to a broader, more robust approach: 'I want to paint to work as flesh...,' he explained, 'I would wish my portraits to be of people, not like them...as far as I am concerned the paint is the person, I want it to work for me as flesh does.' This voracious attitude to his subject, is characteristic of Freud's work. He focusses on the nakedness and vulnerability of human flesh, exposing its blotches, veins and wrinkles, to a pitiless, devouring gaze. His paintings are dramas without incident or narrative and are disturbing in their frank carnality, 'The task of the artist,' claims Freud, 'is to make the human being uncomfortable.' Throughout his career, he has specialized in portraits and figure paintings, preferring always to work from life, and to paint those he knows well. For Freud, this dedicated realism is the springboard, to painterly invention: 'My work is purely autobiographical.' He has stated. ' It is about myself and my sorroundings. It is an attempt at a record. I work from people that interest me and I care about, in rooms that I live in and know. I use the people to invent my pictures with, and I can work more freely when they are there.'

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