Group portrait of painters (left to right) Timothy Behrens, Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach and Michael Andrews at Wheelers Restaurant in Soho, London, 1963 © John Deakin / John Deakin Archive / Bridgeman Images. Courtesy of Gagosian.
The show takes its inspiration from John Deakin’s celebrated photograph that shows the four artists and a young Timothy Behrens at a Soho restaurant in 1963. The exhibition is curated by the art historian Richard Calvocoressi and contextualises key works by these era-defining artists.
The nature of the friendship between these four painters allowed for a healthy mix of competition and collaboration. Of the four, Freud alone collected his friends’ work. At the time of Freud’s death, he owned fifteen paintings and a large number of works on paper by Auerbach.
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue featuring essays by Martin Gayford and Florence Hallett, and an interview with Frank Auerbach by Richard Calvocoressi.
17 Nov – 28 Jan 2023
Gagosian, 20 Grosvenor Hill, London, W1K 3QD