Exhibition: Leon Kossoff - A Life in Painting

Comprising 58 works, this show will be the first posthumous and largest exhibition of Kossoff’s paintings in a commercial setting to date, and coincides with the publication of Leon Kossoff: Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings released by Modern Art Press.

The exhibition is curated by Andrea Rose, former Director of Visual Arts at the British Council and editor of the catalogue raisonné.

Leon Kossoff is recognised as one of the world’s greatest Post-War figurative painters with an appreciation of life’s everyday activities, finding poignancy and beauty in seemingly mundane urban settings. Born in Central London to a family of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine, his childhood was centered in his working class experiences; helping with his father’s bakery, and then serving in the British military in the 1940s. Following his return to London, Kossoff attended St. Martin’s School of Art, though he supplemented his studies attending David Bomberg’s classes at Borough Polytechnic, where he was instructed to focus on experiences rather than just appearances.

Together with the artists Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, Michael Andrews, David Hockney and R.B. Kitaj, Kossoff became known in the late 1970s as part of the “School of London.” Having lived his lifetime in London (from which he rarely travelled), his paintings of his native city are rendered with the familiarity of a close friend. Complicated, sometimes bleak, but always vital and teeming with activity, Kossoff’s paintings reflected London’s transformation, stretching from post-war desolation to international affluence towards the end of the 20th century.