Catherine Lampert, Curator of Frank Auerbach, considers the artist’s insistence on working from life and desire to ‘catch hold of the world of fact and experience at some point at which it hasn’t been caught hold of before’ alongside the influence of Alberto Giacometti, Chaim Soutine, Willem De Kooning and others on his work, and the legacy of Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. The artist’s own early work took account of the older generation of British painters, especially Walter Sickert, David Bomberg, Francis Bacon and William Coldstream, reflecting what Auerbach said in reference to the American Abstract Expressionists: ‘There’s always something in the air’. The lecture is followed by a private view of the exhibition.
Catherine Lampert is an independent curator and art historian. She has curated numerous exhibitions at the Hayward Gallery, the Royal Academy of the Arts, and the Whitechapel Gallery, where she was director from 1988 through 2001. She was co-curator of Bare Life. London artists working from life 1950-80 which was shown in Munster last year. Lampert is the author of many books, including Francis Alӱs, the Prophet and the Fly (2003), Euan Uglow. The Complete Paintings (2007) and Frank Auerbach: Speaking and Painting (2015). Lampert is intimately familiar with Auerbach’s practice, having sat for portraits by the artist since 1978.