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Lucian Freud, Man's Head (Self Portrait I), 1963
Lucian Freud (1922-2011)
Born in Berlin
Moved with his Jewish parents to England in 1933 to escape the rise of Nazism. His grandfather is Sigmund Freud. Lucian Freud is regarded as one of the leading figurative artists of this century.
He spent most of his career in Paddington, West London, an inner-city area whose seediness is reflected in Freud's often sombre and moody interiors and cityscapes.
Lucian
Freud, Man with a Thistle (Self-Portrait) 1946
In the 1940s he was principally interested in drawing, especially the face.
He experimented with Surrealism.
He made meticulously executed realist works, imbued with a pervasive
mood of alienation.
1950s
His brushmarks became spatial as he began to describe the face and body in terms of shape
and structure, and often in female nudes the brushstrokes help to suggest shape. Throughout
his career Freud's palette remained distinctly muted.
"I get my ideas for pictures from watching people I want to work from moving about naked. I want to allow the nature of my model to affect the atmosphere and to some degree the composition. I have watched behaviour change human forms".
"The subject matter is autobiographical; it's all to do with hope and memory and sensuality and involvement, really".
Lucian
Freud, Leigh Bowery, 1991
For more information on Freud's life see: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/lucian-freud-1120
