FRANK AUERBACH Michael Werner Gallery, Berlin

By MICHAEL KLEIN July 28, 2025

He left Germany in 1939. He died in 2024, and in those intermittent years, he rose to be one of Great Britain’s most significant painters, in fact, representing their adopted country at the 1986 Venice Biennale. As described by the British Council’s website:

Auerbach, now widely considered one of Britain’s most influential painters, was awarded the Biennale’s Golden Lion (Leone d'Oro) Prize for the Best Artist, sharing the prize with the German painter and photographer Sigmar Polke.

That exhibition included 24 paintings and 10 drawings. It put him on the international map as an artist of note.

 Installation view

This new exhibition of some thirty works surveys this outstanding career and presents his very personal expressionist style in a country and to an audience familiar with such a painting style. Auerbach is the most Modernist of painters; his subject matter, portraits and landscapes, is the subject matter of many contemporary painters, but his canvases are filled with a subtle tension as if the portrait sitter is about to move or the atmosphere of the cityscape is about to change because of weather or light. Chaim Soutine is perhaps a spiritual father here: sublime, moody, and determined handling of paint. As for his palette, I would place him beside Nicholas de Stael in terms of an intuitive sense of and response to color. For Auerbach, there is no room for accidents; each canvas is planned, determined, and well executed. The application of paint, rich and some might say luxurious, is deliberate and used precisely to define the shape and contour of each face or the architectural structure and form of a building. He very much draws with paint.

This survey begins with a relatively small black and white painting from Primrose Hill, Winter, 1962, and ends with an intense view of In the Studio, 2014. The earlier work, a day in the north London day when bright color is eclipsed by cold and gray light. Some 30 years later, during another winter, Auerbach observes the angular shape of the Chimney in Mornington Crescent, Winter Morning 1991, in deep, dark shades of brown, green, and black, seen against and contrasted with a bright sunlit sky. Just sharp color distinctions are typical of Auerbach at work. It is how he envisions his studio in 2014, an almost abstract representation of colors, forms, and shapes of an easel, a table, and a canvas in progress, that can be seen in his studio. Auerbach’s own snapshot of a day in the life of this painter.

Auerbach, Primrose Hill Morning 1962
 

Portraiture has been a constant topic for Auerbach, and in this exhibition, a strong presentation of his mastery of this theme. Works on paper and paintings, a very simple sketch from 1962 to the more dramatic self-portraits showing the aged artist - compare his self-portrait of 2017 with that of 2024. Many portraits are of his close circle, including his wife Julia, Catherine Lampert, an art historian, and the art critic William Feaver. Each is a small gem, and each is treated like the landscapes, a terrain; his emphasis is to define the shape of the skull, and a few details to define eyes, mouth, hair, etc. His emphasis is on structure, not facial expression or personality. The true radical character in any and all of Auerbach is his ability to remain true to his subject matter yet instill a great manner of abstraction via a gestural handling of wet paint.

The exhibition is a masterclass in painting. It is the vision and energy of an artist not swayed by trends or the shifting of styles over the last few decades, but follows his own path and creates a remarkable body of work, defining painting. It is a stunning example of the artist, but also a very useful model for young artists on being true to your vision and building on it. A close friend in conversation with me about the artist wrote:

In a world often obsessed with polish and perfection, Frank Auerbach’s paintings remain defiantly human, raw, searching, alive. Each layer of paint is a testament to persistence, each surface a record of both struggle and discovery. To stand before his work is to confront the very act of seeing: not as a passive gaze, but as an emotional and physical experience. In this new survey, we are reminded once again that Auerbach does not simply depict life — he wrestles with it, shapes it, and offers it back to us as something richer, rougher, and ultimately more true.