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Reflection with Two Children (Self-Portrait) 1965
© The Artist
Collection Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
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Freud was born in Berlin in December 1922, and came to England
with his family in 1933. He studied briefly at the Central School
of Art in London and, to more effect, at Cedric Morris's East Anglian
School of Painting and Drawing in Dedham. Following this, he served
as a merchant seaman in an Atlantic convoy in 1941. His first solo
exhibition, in 1944 at the Lefevre Gallery, featured the now celebrated
The Painter's Room 1944. In the summer of 1946, he went to Paris
before going on to Greece for several months. Since then he has
lived and worked in London.
Freud's subjects are often the people in his life; friends, family,
fellow painters, lovers, children. As he has said 'The subject matter
is autobiographical, it's all to do with hope and memory and sensuality
and involvement really'. Paintings in the exhibition will range
from Girl with Roses 1948 to Garden, Notting Hill Gate
1997, and highlights include the marvellous series of portraits
of his mother, portraits of fellow painters John Minton, Michael
Andrews and Frank Auerbach, and other major works including Large
Interior W11 (after Watteau) 1981-3. Sharp pictures of his youth
will contrast with the works of his maturity, paintings filled with
life and liveliness, each in its way a celebration.
'I paint people', Freud has said, 'not because of what they are
like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen
to be'.
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