Lucian Freud Essay -- Visual Arts Paintings Art Artist Painter Essays

Lucian FreudFreud, Lucian (1922- ). German-innate(p) British painter. He was born inBerlin, a grandson of Sigmund Freud, came to England with his parentsin 1931, and acquired British nationality in 1939. His earliest lovewas drawing, and he began to work full time as an artist after beinginvalided out of the Merchant Navy in 1942. In 1951 his Interior atPaddington (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) won a swag at the Festivalof Britain, and since then he has built up a formidable reputation asone of the most powerful modern-day figurative painters. Portraitsand nudes are his specialities, often observed in arresting close-up.His early on work was meticulously painted, so he has sometimes beendescribed as a Realist (or rather absurdly as a Superrealist), butthe subjectiveness and intensity of his work has always set him apartfrom the sober usance characteristic of most British figurative artsince the Second homo War. In his later work (from the late 1950s)his handling became much bro ader. ordinarily I underplay facial expression when painting the figure,because I motivation expression to emerge through the body. I used to do totally heads, but came to feel that I relied too much on the face. Iwant the head, as it were, to be more like another limb.- Lucian FreudFreud was born in Berlin in December 1922, and came to England withhis family in 1933. He studied in short at the Central School of Art inLondon and, to more effect, at Cedric Morriss East Anglian School ofPainting and Drawing in Dedham. interest this, he served as amerchant seaman in an Atlantic convoy in 1941. His first soloexhibition, in 1944 at the Lefevre Gallery, have the nowcelebrated The Painters Room 1944. In the s... ...h seeing. His attempt to demystify the military man formwhilst recording the stories of his subjects marks a significantstance against the vacancy of much of contemporary art, which refusesto acknowledge even the existence of such stories and glorifies wholethe visible fo rm. Even though he does not explore those stories, the point that Freud records their presence within his subjects makes hiswork compellingly humane.My work is purely autobiographical,...It is close to myself and mysurroundings. I work from people that interest me and that I careabout, in entourage that I know... When I look at a body it gives me survival of the fittest of what to put in a painting, what will suit me and what wont.There is a distinction between fact and truth. Truth has an element ofrevelation about it. If something is true, it does more than strikeone as merely being so. - Lucian Freud