Ever since the age of twelve, I have drawn and painted London…the strange ever-changing light, the endless streets and the shuddering feel of the sprawling city linger in my mind like a faintly glimmering memory of a long-forgotten, perhaps never experienced childhood, which, if rediscovered and illuminated, would ameliorate the pain of the present.
—Leon Kossoff, Recent Paintings and Drawings (Fischer Fine Art, London, 1972)
In conjunction with London Calling: Bacon, Freud, Kossoff, Andrews, Auerbach, Kitaj currently on display at Los Angeles’s J. Paul Getty Museum, we’re continuing with our blog series highlighting our exhibition history with “The School of London.” This post aims to cover the group’s landmark shows in the 1980s and early 1990s. This was a period when group and individual exhibitions featuring these artists became ubiquitous in the United States and abroad.
In the wake of L.A. Louver’s This Knot of Life and The Yale Center for British Art’s Eight Figurative Painters, draughtsman and cityscape painter Leon Kossoff emerged as a critically praised artist. In 1982 and 1984, L.A. Louver presented solo exhibitions of his work. The second exhibition was also shown in New York at the gallery Hirschl and Adler, which helped to strengthen Kossoff’s reputation on the East Coast. Also, Francis Bacon was featured in a 1983 Tate Gallery Retrospective and figurative painter Frank Auerbach partook in the 1986 Venice Biennale where he received the coveted Golden Lion Award.
Group shows featuring “The School of London” were also prevalent during this era. Auerbach, Kossoff, and Kitaj participated in a two-part group show at L.A. Louver titled American/European Painting/Sculpture (1983). The following year, Tate Gallery curator Richard Morphet put together The Hard-Won Image, a well-received exhibition with Kossoff, R.B. Kitaj, and David Hockney.
In 1988, L.A. Louver hosted The British Picture, a comprehensive group show focusing on Auerbach, Bacon, Freud, Kitaj and Kossoff. Catherine Lampert, the Senior Exhibitions Organizer of The Arts Council of Great Britain and a driving force in exhibiting “The School of London” abroad cited their “intensive personal way of laying the paint which joins a vertiginous, mesmerising field” as what connects these artists together in an essay she wrote for the exhibition catalogue. That same year, The British Council presented another landmark exhibition titled A School of London (Six Figurative Painters) which further cemented the group’s status as a formidable movement. The show made its way to Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebaek, and Museo d’Arte Moderna ca’Persaro, Venice, and Kunstmuseum, Dusseldorf, Germany.
Leon Kossoff also participated in two well-received exhibitions at the XLVI Venice Biennale in 1995. One of which was titled Identity and Alterity: Figures of the Body 1895-1995 and featured David Hockney and Kitaj as well. For his contribution, Kitaj was awarded the Golden Lion Award. In the other, Kossoff was chosen to represent the UK, and this presentation of works traveled onto the Düsseldorf Kunstverein and Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. On top of that achievement, the Tate Gallery awarded Kossoff a solo retrospective in 1996. The show’s curator Paul Moorhouse expounded on the artist’s passion for drawing as a possible reason why he was receiving so much praise, describing it as “an essential, obsessional activity: pursued constantly, both for its own sake and as an indispensable prerequisite to making a painting.”
In 1994, the American who coined the group’s moniker, Kitaj was subject of a retrospective at the Tate, that then traveled to New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Two years later, he received the Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in 1996. The international art community was taking notice of this school, setting the stage for more exhibitions to come. Join us next time when we will discuss the late 1990s and 2000s.
London Calling: Bacon, Freud, Kossoff, Andrews, Auerbach, and Kitaj is currently on display at the J. Paul Getty Museum and runs until November 13. For more information, please go to www.getty.edu.
IMAGES: (top to bottom; left to right) Leon Kossoff, Railway Landscape Near King’s Cross, Summer 1967, 1967; Leon Kossoff announcement,1984; Leon Kossoff, Self Portrait, 1982, oil on board; The British Picture exhibition catalogue, 1988; The British Picture installation photography, 1988; R.B. Kitaj, The Paintist, 1987, oil on canvas; XLVI Venice Biennale exhibition catalogue, 1995; Leon Kossoff, Christchurch, Summer Afternoon, 1994, oil on board; Leon Kossoff, Dusseldorf Kunstverein installation photography, 1995 - 1996