From Publishers Weekly
Auerbach's portrait paintings, with their thick, overloaded surfaces, existentially searching figures and intimations of personal loss, went against the grain of the Hockney-ed '70s. Born in Germany in 1931 to a Berlin lawyer and a Lithuanian artist, both Jews, he was exiled to England at the age of eight. Orphaned by Hitler, this London-based artist summons, through his paintings, the family intimacy denied to him in boyhood. Highly structural landscapes of Camden Town capture "a specific English character of chaos, dinginess and suggestiveness," as Time art critic Hughes observes in this impassioned, probing monograph. As Auerbach's gnomic portrait heads became caricatural, his landscapes turned toward impetuous, rapid notation. His most recent human figures convey battered dignity and fierce protest, a sense of mass in movement.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Born in Germany in 1931 and exiled to England at the age of eight, Auerbach creates thickly impastoed portraits of gnomic human caricatures that convey fierce pride, battered dignity, existential searching, and personal loss. His work of the past four decades is vividly reproduced here in 254 illustrations, including 80 color plates. The text, based on conversations and letters from 1986 to 1988, could profitably have been accompanied by a bibliography, exhibition list, and index, which are sorely missed. Nevertheless, Hughes, noted art critic for Time and author of The Shock of the New (Knopf, 1981), The Fatal Shore ( LJ 11/1/86), and Nothing If Not Critical ( LJ 9/1/90), has produced another winner.
- Russell T. Clement, Brigham Young Univ. Lib., Provo, Ut.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Russell T. Clement, Brigham Young Univ. Lib., Provo, Ut.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
