All Too Human celebrates the painters in Britain who strove to represent human figures, their relationships and surroundings in the most intimate of ways.
It features artists including Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon alongside rarely seen work from their contemporaries including Frank Auerbach and Paula Rego. Many of them lived or live in London, drawn to the multicultural capital from around the world. Three important works by Francis Bacon will be shown in the UK for the first time in at least three decades.
I want the paint to work as flesh does.
Lucian Freud, 2009
The exhibition also shows how this spirit in painting was fostered by the previous generation, from Walter Sickert to David Bomberg, and how contemporary artists continue to express the tangible reality of life through paint.
[I want to portray the] sensation of a page torn from the book of life
Walter Sickert, 1910
Francis Bacon
Three Figures and Portrait (1975)
Tate
Paula Rego, Bride 1994. Tate Purchased 1995 © Paula Rego
Francis Bacon, Study for Portrait of Lucian Freud 1964. Private Collection
Lucian Freud, Man's Head (Self-Portrait I) 1963. Whitworth Art Gallery (Manchester, UK) © The Lucian Freud Archive / Bridgeman Images
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Coterie Of Questions 2015. Private Collection
Francis Bacon
Figure in a Landscape (1945)
Tate
R.B. Kitaj, The Wedding 1989-93. Tate Presented by the artist 1993
Walter Richard Sickert, Nuit d'Été c.1906. Private Collection Ivor Braka Ltd.
Michael Andrews, Melanie and Me Swimming 1978-9. Tate Purchased 1979
F.N. Souza, Mr Sebastian 1955. Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (New Delhi, India)
