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.

Friends and Relations: Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Michael
November 15, 2022
Friends and Relations: Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Michael Andrews opens next week at Gagosian, London featuring ACS members Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach.

 

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