Painter Frank Auerbach, who fled the Nazis and became a major artist, dies at 93

LONDON — Frank Auerbach, who fled Nazi Germany for Britain as a child and became one of the major artists of the 20th century, has died at 93.

Auerbach’s gallery, Frankie Rossi Art Projects, said on Tuesday the artist died at his home in London the day before.

Born in Berlin in 1931, Auerbach came to England in 1939 as one of six children sponsored by the writer Iris Origo. It was part of a movement known as the the Kindertransport that rescued thousands of Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Europe in the months before World War II.

Auerbach was 7 and never saw his parents again. Both were killed in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

“I’ve done this thing that psychiatrists disapprove of, which is blocking things out,” Auerbach told the BBC eight decades later. “Life is too short, in my case, to brood over the past.”

He attended a Quaker-run boarding school in England alongside other refugees and war orphans, and after studies at St. Martin’s School of Art and the Royal College of Art in London, he devoted his life to painting.

He lived and worked in the same north London studio from 1954 until his death and, according to his gallery, worked 364 days a year.

Along with the other “School of London” post-war artists including Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and Leon Kossoff, he focused on figurative painting regardless of changing artistic fashions. Auerbach slathered canvasses in thick layers of paint to produce near-abstract but recognizable landscapes and brooding, occluded portraits.

Auerbach told the BBC earlier this year that the paintings' “eccentric thickness” was "an involuntary byproduct of the fact that I went on and on and on and repainted the whole image from top to bottom every time.”

“All art comes out of dissatisfaction," he said.

Auerbach exhibited his work from the 1950s but didn't gain fame for another 20 years. His first retrospective exhibition was at London's Hayward Gallery in 1978. He represented Britain at the 1986 Venice Biennale, winning the Golden Lion top prize. His most recent exhibition, Frank Auerbach: The Charcoal Heads, opened at London's Courtauld Gallery in February.

In later life, his work commanded high prices. In 2023, “Mornington Crescent” – one of many paintings inspired by the urban streets near his home — sold at Sotheby’s for $7.1 million, a record for the artist.

“We have lost a dear friend and remarkable artist but take comfort knowing his voice will resonate for generations to come," said Geoffrey Parton, director of Frankie Rossi Art Projects.

Auerbach is survived by his son, Jacob Auerbach.