Frank Auerbach: Drawings of People

The first extended study of Frank Auerbach’s remarkable portrait drawings reveals their complexity and ambition as works of graphic art

This book offers an original approach to one of Britain’s leading artists: Frank Auerbach (b. 1931). It looks in detail at his portrait drawings, which Auerbach has been making since the 1950s, and which he has always considered important, freestanding works of art. By turns eerie, shocking, enigmatic, and hauntingly tender, they demand fresh interpretation and investigation. Reproducing more than 130 examples of these portraits, some for the first time, and featuring new essays by curators, scholars, and critics, this book provides an unprecedented opportunity to explore and reassess these striking and sometimes unsettling works of graphic art. Frank Auerbach: Drawings of People includes texts by both the editors and the artist himself, and new essays by Kate Aspinall, James Finch, Alex Massouras, David Mellor, and Barnaby Wright.

Distributed for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

Mark Hallett is director of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. Catherine Lampert is a curator and art historian, and has been sitting for Frank Auerbach since May 1978.