About the work

Sketch for a couple of paintings entitled `Mornington Crescent Looking South’, 1997.

Mornington Crescent Looking South is a series of vibrant cityscape under an early morning London sky, with an abundance of colour liberally applied; every brushstroke making a discernable trace that matches the energy of the colour. A bending road, high-rise buildings and streetlights can be deciphered in the expressionistic scene. Something in his expressive quality creates this indefinable quality; an emotional attachment of place that raises the status of London from the city in which he lives, to the place that he calls home. Mornington Crescent is the location of his studio, in which he has lived and worked since 1954.

 

Date and country of birth

1931, DE

Career Highlights

Frank Auerbach was born in Berlin in 1931 and came to England in 1939. He studied painting at St Martin’s School of Art, London, from 1948 to 1952, and attended David Bomberg’s drawing classes at the Borough Polytechnic. He studied at the Royal College of Art from 1952 to 1955. In 1986, at the XLII Venice Biennale, Auerbach was awarded the Golden Lion prize, shared with the German painter Sigmar Polke. Monographic exhibitions of his work have since been hosted at various prominent venues including Yale Center for British Art, New Haven (1991) the Royal Academy of Arts, London (2001), the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (2013-14), Tate Britain, London (2014), the Courtauld, London (2024).