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Lucian Freud

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Lucian Freud's massive nudes are among the most powerful and moving visual images of our time, and in this exhaustive overview of Freud's career, readers can trace how he arrived at them. Photos of Freud at work provide a unique view of this very private man. 340 illustrations, many in color.

360 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

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Lucian Freud

53 books8 followers
Lucian Michael Freud was a British painter and draughtsman, specialising in figurative art, and is known as one of the foremost 20th-century English portraitists. He was born in Berlin, the son of Jewish architect Ernst L. Freud and the grandson of Sigmund Freud. Freud got his first name "Lucian" from his mother in memory of the ancient writer Lucian of Samosata. His family moved to England in 1933, when he was 10 years old, to escape the rise of Nazism. He became a British naturalized citizen in 1939. From 1942 to 1943 he attended Goldsmiths College, London. He served at sea with the British Merchant Navy during the Second World War.

His early career as a painter was influenced by surrealism, but by the early 1950s his often stark and alienated paintings tended towards realism. Freud was an intensely private and guarded man, and his paintings, completed over a 60-year career, are mostly of friends and family. They are generally sombre and thickly impastoed, often set in unsettling interiors and urban landscapes. The works are noted for their psychological penetration and often discomforting examination of the relationship between artist and model. Freud worked from life studies, and was known for asking for extended and punishing sittings from his models.

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Profile Image for Andrea Engle.
1,729 reviews48 followers
March 29, 2018
Magnificent volume of Lucian Freud's etchings, with two essays ... "Freud's Man and Beast" by Anders Kold, Curator and Head of Acquitions at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art since 2001 ... "Lucian Freud: The Trenchant Gaze" by Richard Cork, who knew the artist and is currently an art critic and curator ... both superb analyses of the artist ... an exhibition catalogue for "LUCIAN FREUD -- CLOSER, etchings from the UBS Collection", held July to October 2017 in Berlin ... absolutely breath-taking ... Lucian Freud said: "You can't be aware enough. I've always thought that biology was a great help to me and perhaps even having worked with animals was a help. I thought through observation I could make something into my own that might not have been seen or noticed in that way before." [as quoted by Anders Kold] ...
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