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The Arts Intel Report

Frank Auerbach: The Charcoal Heads

Frank Auerbach, Head of Julia II, 1960.

Feb 9 – May 27, 2024
Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN, United Kingdom

The German artist Frank Auerbach arrived in Britain in 1938, at the age of seven, after his parents managed to sneak him onto a Kindertransport train. They stayed in Europe and eventually perished at Auschwitz. As a young man in postwar London, Auerbach channeled his grief into a series of portrait heads drawn in charcoal and chalk. The faces—blurred and fractured, weighted with sorrow and uncertainty—emerge from darkness. These were Auerbach’s images for war and destruction, his elegy. In this exhibition, the full series is brought hauntingly together for the first time. —Elena Clavarino

Photo: © the artist/courtesy of Frankie Rossi Projects, London