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january 16, 2023 - Museo Thyssen

LUCIAN FREUD. New perspectives

The #museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in collaboration with The National Gallery, London, presents a retrospective on the British painter #lucianfreud (1922-2011) to mark the centenary of the artist’s birth. Curated by Daniel Herrmann in London and Paloma Alarcó in Madrid, this exhibition brings together more than 50 works spanning the seven-decade career of one of the most important European artists of the 20th century. The extensive accompanying catalogue, which has texts by the curators and contributions by experts on Freud’s work and by contemporary artists, poses new questions on the relevance of the artist’s work with the aim of introducing it to younger generations. The exhibition is on display in London until 22 January 2023, after which it will open at the #museo Thyssen in Madrid in mid-February, where it will benefit from the support of the Comunidad de Madrid.

"I go the National Gallery rather like going to a doctor for help"

Exhibiting Lucian Freud’s work in the context of two historic museums allows it to be shown as an uninterrupted continuation of the past. Freud was an assiduous visitor to the world’s leading art museums and his work reveals a series of allusions to the great masters of the past, from Holbein to Cranach, Hals, Velázquez, Rembrandt, Watteau, Ingres, Courbet, Rodin or Cézanne, although these connections coexist with a powerfully independent approach. The new perspective adopted by the exhibition, which is the first major retrospective to be organised since Freud’s death in 2011, focuses attention on his lifelong commitment to the essence of painting.

"What do I ask of a painting? I ask it to astonish, disturb, seduce, convince"

Subversive, incisive and on occasions shocking, Lucian Freud’s painting, which ran contrary to the abstract and conceptual trends that prevailed at the time when it was created, always focused on the depiction of the human body and on the portrayal of modern man.   Freud’s true abiding interest throughout his work was to present painting on painting – his personal meta-artistic reflection – and the “intensification of reality” that he always strove to achieve.

The #museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza is the only Spanish museum that has works by #lucianfreud in its collection; a total of five, all of them included in this exhibition. Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza was one of the first private collectors to focus on the artist’s work: he and the painter established close ties and Freud painted him twice. The lengthy posing sessions of the type to which the artist always subjected his sitters fostered their friendship, which was a long-lasting one. In addition, Watteau’s painting Pierrot content (ca. 1712), which forms the background of one of these portraits and belongs to the collection of the #museo Thyssen, provided the inspiration for another of Freud’s paintings.

The exhibition has a broadly chronological structure, divided into various thematic sections that analyse the painter’s evolution from the 1940s to the start of the 21st century.

Further information in the press release to download

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