Frank Auerbach is the artist that attracted me the most after looking through all of them again for a second time, I love the way that his sorta glitchy and dark drawings look, they look very manic yet controlled and replicating that will be hard but it is something that looks so satisfying to me. Frank often draws and paints a very small subject pool, usually faces/portraits of people or landscapes. Frank would often paint/draw over his previous work, and in one interview he said that he had painted over the same work 200 times before, he said that he never had a vision in mind and it would eventually come to him during the drawing. This led to his work appearing to be very heavy, there would be layers on top of each other and his work appeared very dark and distrubed because of it.
Frank Auerbach had a large amount of loss in his life at a very young age and this loss may have helped dictate the very dark and disturbed art style that he ended up pursuing. When Frank was just seven years old he was separated from his parents during the holocaust and sent to Britain for his own safety, after being sent to Britain his parents were killed in a concentration camp. Frank made the most of this second chance and attended art school, and then proceeded to the Royal College of art before getting his own solo show at the Beaux Art Gallery. Frank used the pain of his past by harnessing it and showing darkness and despair in his works, even if he didn’t necessarily mean it, it was still shown subconsciously.
Auerbach never held back when it came to his markings, he would intentionally make very heavy lines, these would usually be very jagged and shaky lines though, this makes his art style very unique because usually someone drawing in a very bold line style would have very straight and well thought out strokes but he draws like someone with a light stroke that could be easily erased if not perfect. This doubles down on his bold style of drawing over the same work many times. I also really like the fact that the people that Auerbach drew were people that he knew. He said in an interview that he was more engaged with drawing people that he knew and he found it very touching to see them age throughout his art. Auerbach was a prolific artist during the rebuild and recovery of London and many of his critics credit him with helping other Londoners see the city in a different light and he was widely respected by his peers and critics, his style was so interesting and unique that it was hard to compare with others and it was apparent that his art was something with more weight than a painting or drawing.
Frank Auerbach has a style that really interests me and I am really curious if I will be able to replicate it even to a minimal extent, his work is very skilled and I was disappointed that I had never seen his work before.
Tate. “Who Is Frank Auerbach?” Tate, 2015, www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/frank-auerbach/auerbach-introduction.
“Frank Auerbach.” Artnet, 2015, www.artnet.com/artists/frank-auerbach/.