Exhibition: Frank Auerbach: The Charcoal Heads

A group of hauntingly beautiful, large-scale portrait heads in charcoal by Frank Auerbach - considered some of his early masterpieces – are being presented together for the first time.

Produced in the 1950s and 1960s during his early years in post-war London, this series of monumental charcoal heads reveal the significance of drawing to the development of Auerbach’s practice as he found his voice as a young artist.

Auerbach created a new way of drawing that pushed the medium beyond conventional limits, and he considered these drawings to be of equal status to his paintings. The qualities and possibilities of charcoal allowed him to make works that offer us experiences – by turns unsettling and beautiful – of what it feels like to comprehend deeply the unique presence of another person.

This series of charcoal heads emerged over numerous sessions with a small handful of sitters who were important people in Auerbach’s life who modelled for him over long periods. Auerbach spent months on each drawing, working, erasing and reworking them completely, sometimes breaking through the paper before patching it up and carrying on. The scars of this intense and vigorous process are evident in the finished portraits, which are richly textured and layered, emerging from the darkness of the charcoal as vital and alive after an embattled process of creation. The drawings connect us to the tenor of their times as lives were rebuilt, and London slowly recovered following the destruction and upending of the Second World War. The drawings express the fragility of life but also how remarkable it is to experience the vitality of a human presence.

As Auerbach later put it: “I feel there is no grander entity than the individual human being… I would like my work to stand for individual experience.”