The Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin will open on the 6th of June 2007 a retrospective exhibition celebrating one of the most important, talented and personal living artist : Lucian Freud. The curators have already chosen around 50 paintings and 20 works on paper and etching, covering the last six decades in the artist's career, some of which have been completed only recently and therefore will be presented for the first time in public. Lucian Freud si best known for his portraits and nudes, chosing his models from his family and circle of friends, or among his lovers and other artists. Since the beginning of his artistic career his compositions have been remarkably elegant and detailed. While he was living in Ireland he prefered depicting people, plants and still-life, and at the end of the 1950's he started using a more precise manner, with thicker colours and touches.
The works in the exhibition will be organised thematically in several sections, thus focusing on the artist's interest for certain themes, such as self-portraits, animals, double portraits or, even more interesting, representing the same model at different ages.
Lucian Freud is the grandson of the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. Born in 1922 in Berlin, Freud moved with his family to London at the age of 11 and studied at first at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London, then at the East Anglican School of Painting and Drawing in Dedham. He had his first solo exhibition during the war, in 1944, at the Lefevre Gallery, where he presented The Painter's Room, one of his most important creations. Decades later, Lucian Freud was a celebrated and admired artist, being considered one of the most important British painters of the 20th century. Freud had a huge retrospective of his work in 2002 at the Tate Britain and is now living in London.
The exhibition is curated by Catherine Lampert, one of the most important specialists in the work of Lucian Freud. After it's showing at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the exhibition will travel to Copenhagen and The Hague.
A special illustrated catalogue, with texts by Catherine Lampert, art critic and writer, Martin Gayford, and Freud's son, Frank Paul, will be published for the exhibition.
27 March 2007
