One of Britain’s most celebrated postwar artists, Leon Kossoff (1926-2019) is best known for his cityscapes of London and his evocative portraits painted from life and memory. The London landscape and the human figure remained consistent themes of Kossoff’s studio involvement throughout his life. The rich collections and special exhibitions at London’s National Gallery and Royal Academy likewise inspired Kossoff. This is evidenced by Kossoff’s extensive body of etchings and drawings after Old Master paintings.
Lauded as “one of the best British paintings of the decade” in Peter Fuller’s Artforum review of The Hayward Annual 1979, Outside Kilburn Underground, Indian Summer: for Rosalind (1978) depicts a subject that captivated Leon Kossoff throughout his career. Trains, railways, and the London underground are among the most significant imagery found across Kossoff’s oeuvre, as symbols of modernity and aesthetic vehicles that convey an inevitable, unstoppable forward momentum. Rendered in distinctive, impassioned layers of oil paint that deny the binary between representation and abstraction, the physicality of the painting’s impasto reflects the collective psychological weight of ordinary life in postwar London.
Outside Kilburn Underground, Indian Summer: for Rosalind has been exhibited worldwide including at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark; Museum of Modern Art in Lucerne, Switzerland; Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City, Mexico; Santa Barbara Museum of Art in Santa Barbara, CA; Hayward Gallery in London, United Kingdom; among many other prestigious locations.
L.A. Louver became involved with Leon Kossoff in 1978. The gallery was the first to present Kossoff’s work outside of the UK with This Knot of Life: Current British Painting & Drawing (1979) and has represented Kossoff since 1981. Subsequently, Kossoff participated in seven solo exhibitions and over a dozen group presentations at the gallery in the decades that followed.
We invite you to view Outside Kilburn Underground and a selection of Kossoff's prints and drawings after Poussin, on view now in L.A. Louver Celebrates 50 Years through 14 June.
