Frank Auerbach 1931-2024
Jake Auerbach (b. 1958) is a producer and documentary filmmaker, whose work includes a series on contemporary artists such as Paula Rego, Allen Jones, Lucian Freud and his father Frank Auerbach. This print is part of a series of etchings of friends and family entitled Seven Portraits, drawn by the artist with a Japanese screwdriver bought from his local Woolworth's. The etchings were made to accompany the deluxe edition of Robert Hughes’ Frank Auerbach monograph in 1990 and were proofed and printed by Marc Balakjian at Studio Prints.
The portrait of Jake demonstrates a strong similarity to Auerbach’s expressive impasto painting. In etching, the longer the plate is exposed to acid, the more deeply-bitten the resulting lines will be. Jake’s plate was initially bitten for over four hours, then Auerbach added further lines and the plate was bitten for another nine hours, culminating in a thickness of form which distinguishes it from the other sitters in Seven Portraits.
Provenance
presented by the artist 1994Exhibitions
1997 Jewish Artists in London: Works from the Ben Uri Collection, Exeter University Gallery
2007 London Senses and Experiences: Art in the Big City - Michael Andrews, Frank Auerbach, Lucian Freud, Ron Kitaj, Leon Kossoff, Euan Uglow, Ben Uri Gallery - The London Jewish Museum of Art
2010 Apocalypse: unveiling a lost masterpiece by Marc Chagall and 50 selected masterworks from the Ben Uri Collection, Osborne Samuel
2012 Chaim Soutine and his Contemporaries - from Russia to Paris and School of London works from the Ben Uri Collection, Ben Uri Gallery
2015 No Set Rules: A Century of Selected Works from the Schlee Collection, Southampton, and the Ben Uri Collection, London, Ben Uri Gallery
2016 100 for 100: Ben Uri Past, Present & Future, Christie's South Kensington
2017 Refugees: The Lives of Others - German Refugee Artists to the UK, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum
2018 Finchleystrasse: German artists in exile in Great Britain and beyond 1933-45, Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, London (Department of Culture and Education)
2019 Migrations: masterworks from the Ben Uri Collection, Gloucester Museum
Literature
Sarah MacDougall ed., No Set Rules: A Century of Selected Works from the Schlee Collection, Southampton, and the Ben Uri Collection, London (London: Ben Uri Gallery, 2015), pp. 22-23 (illus. included);Sarah MacDougall ed., Soutine and his Contemporaries - from Russia to Paris (London: Ben Uri Gallery, 2012) pp. 40-41;
David Glasser, London Senses and Experiences (London, Ben Uri Gallery, 2007);
Walter Schwab and Julia Weiner, eds., Jewish Artists: the Ben Uri Collection - Paintings, Drawings, Prints and Sculpture (London: Ben Uri Art Society in association with Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, 1994), p. 114.
