16.05.2016 - 12.08.2017
Frank Auerbach & Lucian Freud
- Faces -
For Frank Auerbach and Lucian Freud, art is a process of knowledge: about the other person, about himself and about the world. Her portraits are among the most uncompromising and innovative of contemporary art. On the occasion of significant new acquisitions, the Städel Museum's graphic collection presents 40 masterful prints and drawings by the two artist friends for the first time together.
For nearly four decades, until the death of Lucian Freud, the artists were close friends. It not only combined the esteem for the art of each other, but also the fate of having been born in Berlin as the sons of Jewish families. Even as a child, they had to flee from Nazi Germany to England or emigrate. Her works are expressions of a very personal way of seeing and experiencing and, despite great formal and stylistic differences, developed surprisingly similar strategies: for weeks, sometimes years, Auerbach and Freud persistently observed and portrayed the same people from their immediate surroundings. Repetition and limitation are means of concentration in the search for knowledge: about the other person, about himself and about the world.
Source: (website Städel)