Frank Auerbach was born in Berlin in 1931 and was sent to Britain in 1939, after fleeing Nazi Germany. He studied painting first under David Bomberg at Borough Polytechnic in London, continuing his studies at St Martin’s and the Royal College of Art from the late 1940s to the mid 1950s. He was part of the ‘School of London’, a loose group of artists including R.B Kijai, Lucian Freud, Michael Andrews, Francis Bacon and Leon Kossoff. Auerbach’s heavily paint-laden, energetic brushstrokes are often compared to Expressionist artists worldwide, such as de Kooning in the US and Beckmann in Germany. He taught at several art schools in Britain, including Camberwell College of Arts and the Slade School of Fine Art.
