School of London

Messrs Timothy Behrens, Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach and Michael Andrews, having lunch at Wheeler’s Restaurant in Soho, London, 1963

For the first event, I chose the School of London. The School of London was officially named in 1976 when Kitaj organized an exhibition that featured 48 participants who painted people and places with raw energy and angst. “The School of London was a loosely affiliated group of Post-war artists who rejected Minimalist and Conceptual avant-garde styles in favor of representational subjects and painterly techniques.” They revolutionized figurative painting after WWII, choosing to paint the real world and people without altering such as landscapes scarred by wartime bombing and the human body. Rather than a movement, the School of London was viewed as a social group that reached Europe and the United States, where artists found common ground with those not devoted to pure abstraction. Lucian Freud was a key member of the School London and was described as a portraitist. He was known for his realistic and thought-provoking portraits, which align closely with the school’s interpretation of realism art of what is in front of the painter. Freud’s work often portrayed the naked body emphasizing the vulnerabilities and uncomfortable nature of the human experience.

Associated Place(s)

Event date:

5 Aug 1976

Parent Chronology: