‘Frank Auerbach’ at Galerie Michael Werner Berlin review

paintings of distorted heads — Left, Frank Auerbach, ca. 1949. Courtesy Jake Auerbach. Right, Frank Auerbach “Self-Portrait”, 2024

(Image credit: © The Estate of Frank Auerbach. Left, Courtesy Jake Auerbach nd right, courtesy Frankie Rossi Art Projects and Michael Werner Gallery)

Born in Berlin in 1931, artist Frank Auerbach was sent to England alone as an eight-year-old refugee to escape Nazi Germany, leaving behind his Jewish parents, who would later lose their lives in a concentration camp. Settling in the country permanently, Auerbach would go on to study at the Royal College of Art, developing a distinctive style that involved repeatedly scraping layers of wet paint off his canvases, before beginning again, lending his works the visceral, evocative edge that he is celebrated for.

Auerbach rarely left England, working in the same London studio from the 1950s until his death last year. Now his work returns to the place of his birth in his first posthumous exhibition, which is also his first in the city. Showing at Galerie Michael Werner, it encompasses six decades of his paintings and drawings, offering a mix of self-portraits, dating from the last years of his life, and portraits of those closest to him. Among them are ones of show curator Catherine Lampert, who developed a close relationship with the painter over the nearly four decades in which she sat for him, and wife Julia, reclining in a tangle of acrylic. These sit alongside studies of familiar London landmarks, such St Pancras station steps and Mornington Crescent, the area he lived in and loved.

Auerbach had reduced his circle of sitters in the 1980s to a small number. Emboldened by a close intimacy with his subjects, he felt free to embrace an experimental drama in paintings that took on a vivid, mysterious life of their own. Says Lampert, ‘Auerbach’s personal policy was to keep ‘under the radar’, to show as infrequently as possible, and let almost no one into his studio. In the last years, with several exhibitions of very early and very late work, there is not only more awareness of the importance of his achievement, but, characteristically, a greater realisation that what he said was true. He wanted to get to know his subjects, his urban landscapes and sitters, intimately, as a way of spotting unfamiliar connections, in the hope of achieving ‘a more precise and demanding sense of what is the truth’.’

‘Frank Auerbach’ is on until 28 June at Galerie Michael Werner, Berlin

A version of this article appears in the June 2025 Travel Issue of Wallpaper*, available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

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Hannah Silver is a writer and editor with over 20 years of experience in journalism, spanning national newspapers and independent magazines. Currently Art, Culture, Watches & Jewellery Editor of Wallpaper*, she has overseen offbeat art trends and conducted in-depth profiles for print and digital, as well as writing and commissioning extensively across the worlds of culture and luxury since joining in 2019.