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FRANCIS BACON Self Portrait, 1982
© "VBK
Wien, 1999"
Courtesy Marlborough. International Fine Art.
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School of London
12 May - 29 August 1999, open daily 10 - 19 hrs |
Coined
in 1976 by the American-born painter Ronald B. Kitaj as a means
of drawing attention to the exceptional range and vigour he
had found in contemporary art in England, the term School of
London applies essentially to a group of artists living in the
capital in the 1950s who were committed to renewing figurative
painting throughout the rise and dominance of abstract art.
Essentially the term draws attention to the fact that since
the war London has produced a variety of powerfully inventive
artists. Although, like the Ecole de Paris, the School of London
remains a flexible concept, there is a well-defined group of
figurative painters at its core who were drawn together by shared
admirations and ambitions from the late 1950s onwards, as abstraction
became the dominant mode: they followed each other’s work
closely and exhibited in the same West End gallery. If the School
of London can be said to have a leader, it would be Francis
Bacon, who served as a model of invention and independence to
all the artists and not least to his close companion, the masterly
painter of human flesh, Lucian Freud. Leon Kossoff and Frank
Auerbach studied together and were both deeply influenced by
Expressionism, while their friend Michael Andrews developed
an intensely personal vision in which reality is made memorable
by subtle distortions. By his commitment to the figure and his
championing of the group’s existence, Kitaj was automatically
connected to the School of London, which also includes the Paris-based
sculptor Raymond Mason, who frequented the other artists and
showed with them before leaving London. The work of these artists
has affected a whole younger generation of painters in London.
They are represented in this exhibition by Paula Rego, Bill
Jacklin, Celia Paul, Tony Bevan and Stephen Conroy, creators
of distinct pictorial worlds, but united by a passionate belief
in the human figure as the focus of their art. The first part
of the exhibition presents the School of London’s traditionally
accepted hard core - Francis Bacon, Leon Kossoff, Michael Andrews,
Frank Auerbach, R. B. Kitaj - with the addition of Raymond Mason,
the English-born, Paris-based sculptor who showed his early
work in London in the 1950s. The works by Lucian Freud, recently
shown in Paris and Santiago de Compostela in this exhibition,
cannot be presented in Vienna because the artist refuses to
be exhibited in Austria. The second part of the exhibition,
curated by Jill Lloyd, opens up the debate by introducing a
younger generation of figurative painters:
Paula Rego, Bill Jacklin, Stephen Conroy, Celia Paul and Tony
Bevan. They have been aware of theSchool of London painters’
achievement - hard won during a period dominated by abstraction
- throughout their career; and they share with them a dedication
to the human figure as the natural focus of their art. Beyond
that, it is above all a diversity of temperament and means,
imagination and technique, that they display. They also put
us eloquently in mind of the continuing inventiveness and vigour
of figurative art in England today. The exhibition is curated
by Michael Peppiatt, a well-known scholar of modern British
art and Jill Lloyd, who has contributed original research on
the second generation of British figurative painters. It will
be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue in German and
English, with essays by the curators as well as interviews with
the artists and selected texts on their work. This will be the
first definitive publication in German on the subject and, together
with the exhibition, it will make a substantial contribution
to the knowledge and understanding of contemporary British art
in Europe. |
THE EXHIBITION WAS SUPPORTED BY
DER STANDARD, AUSTRIAN AIRLINES, ANA GRAND HOTEL WIEN AND YUMYUM COMMUNICATIONS. |
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