LONDON.- Frank Auerbach: Speaking and Painting is an intimate portrait of one of Britain’s greatest living artists. In the course of a career covering more than sixty years, Auerbach has established a still growing international reputation for his paintings with their vigorous, precise brushwork. He is also respected as one of modern and contemporary art’s clearest thinkers.

Catherine Lampert has had unique access to the artist since 1978, when she first became one of his sitters. With an emphasis on Auerbach ‘speaking’, drawn from her conversations with him and from published and archival interviews, she gives a rare insight into his professional life, working methods and philosophy.

Frank Auerbach reflects on the places, people and experiences that have shaped his life. These include arriving in Britain as a nearly-8-year-old refugee from Nazi Germany in 1939, finding his way in the London art world of the 1950s and 1960s, his friendships with Leon Kossoff, Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, among others, references to figures such as Rembrandt and Giacometti, and also his approaches to painting.

The text is complemented by illustrations of Auerbach’s paintings and drawings as well as images from the studio and personal photographs that have never been published before.

Catherine Lampert is an independent curator and art historian, and was director of the Whitechapel Gallery in London from 1988 to 2001. She is the curator of the Auerbach retrospective at the Kunstmuseum Bonn (opening in June 2015) and Tate Britain (9 October 2015 – 13 March 2016) and previously curated the two major exhibitions of Auerbach’s work at the Hayward 1978 and Royal Academy of Arts in 2001.