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TRUE TO LIFE: Freud, Auerbach, Bomberg, Lenkiewicz and The New British Realists
3 February 2007 - 26 March 2007
The Herbert, Jordan Well, Coventry, CV1 5QP
True To Life celebrates the evolving tradition of figurative painting with past and contemporary classics. If Zola’s words were not enough, I was left in no doubt on entering this exhibition that I was in for a sensory visual feast. Major works by Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, David Bomberg, Robert Lenkiewicz, Nahem Shoa and Desmond Haughton, together with the New British Realists stop you in your tracks. In the present critical climate a show like this feels revolutionary.
‘All good paintings should be as much about the materiality of paint on the canvas as the image itself’, explains Nahem Shoa, one of the leading figures in a new generation of British realists painters, ‘the painting’, he continues, ‘should come out of the act of seeing and become like a force of nature in itself.‘
Shoa is best known for his monumental, thickly painted and emotionally charged canvases, showing faces, skulls and figures, often of fellow artists, such as Gbenga Ilumoka, Caroline Poole and Desmond Haughton, all members of the seven-strong New British Realists group, which Shoa firmly believes continues an important living tradition of art.
Reality, whatever it is, is in the present. All these artists are attempting to paint what they see, while they see it, they are always dealing with the here and now, even though the painting may take a long time. Beauty, like truth, is relative to the time when one lives and to the individual who can grasp it. The expression of beauty is in direct ratio to the power of conception the artist has acquired.
None of the artists in True To Life exhibition have tried to look for a style, and couldn’t careless about originality and yet who is more unique in the 21st century than Auerbach or Freud. If Pollock invented the drip, then Freud will go down in history as the artist who reinvented flesh.
Cezanne wrote at the end of his life "Doubtless there are things in nature which have not yet been seen. If an artist discovers them, he opens the way for his successors. If I have left something unsaid, they will say it." The artists in True to Life feel that they are part of this strand of modernism that came out of the example set by Cezanne that demonstrates there is still a strong living European tradition of realist painting which is utterly relevant in the twenty-first century. True To Life shows works that have the quality of sustenance.
- Miriam Barnard, Art Historian
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UNCOMPROMISING STUDY
24 June - 6 August 2006
Hartlepool Art Gallery, Church Square, Hartlepool
A new and significant show which is taking place at Hartlepool Art Gallery for six weeks from June 23rd 06. ‘Uncompromising Study’ is an exhibition of ten of the most exciting perception based figurative painters in Britain which will include works by Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach. Robert Lenkiewicz, Nahem Shoa, as well as the work of the New British Realists, seven contemporary artists who come from the same tradition.
In the V&A in London this April Freud and Auerbach have been exhibited side by side for the first time. Unbelievably this has never happened before. We will be staging the same historical precedent in the North of England. Freud’s painting "Head of a woman", which has recently been shown in the Musei Civica Veneziani as part of this years Venice Biennale and Auerbach’s painting "Building Site Oxford Street" and the drawing study that accompanies this work which has not been shown in the last 30 years but in addition we are able to include Lenkiewicz masterpiece "the Painter with Mary" and Shoa’s acclaimed Giant Head painting of Ben. This is a unique opportunity to allow the art world and the public to see the work of four giants of figurative painting together.
It is of interest that both Freud and Shoa had their first major solo shows in Hartlepool Art Gallery.
All the New British Realists share the same commitment to working directly from life, they see the perceived world as a sensory visual feast, with unlimited creative potential, it is not unusual for them to spend years on one work and only seeing it as complete when it has achieved a tangible visual truth. As Freud succinctly put it, "the picture in order to move us must never merely remind us of life, but must acquire a life of its own."
The aim of this exhibition is to show is to show that there is still a modern living European tradition of realist painting going on that is utterly relevant in the twenty first century.
- Ed Norton, Hartlepool Arts Museums
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